Critic Reviews
79
Metascore
Generally Favorable
positive
27(82%)
mixed
6(18%)
negative
0(0%)
Showing 33 Critic Reviews
100
The film is seductive, disturbing, enthralling -- a trip to hell that gives the passengers a great ride.
100
Like a bomb exploding in a fireworks factory: It's fierce and shocking and dazzling and wonderful.
100
A marvelous achievement that refuses to avert its gaze from the poetry and the insane savagery of the hopeless.
100
Meticulous in its descriptions of well-intended individuals caught up in these ferocious waves of street crime.
100
An exhilarating slap in the face, bracing and sexy, smart and visceral, stylish and raw -- the advent of a fabulously exciting new moviemaking talent.
100
One of the most uncompromisingly bleak films I've ever seen.
100
It's a trip to Hell and back, and testimony for embittered cynics of all that a movie can be.
100
The film finds a surprising amount of tenderness and humor beneath the brutality. The laughs may catch in the throat, but that's only a byproduct of City Of God's power to leave viewers breathless.
100
Breathtaking and terrifying, urgently involved with its characters, it announces a new director of great gifts and passions: Fernando Meirelles.
100
One of the most startling, grittily brilliant films in recent years.
