Speaker 1: Meaning a light Man like this man letting butterfly flapping
Speaker 1: his wing big down in the forest. Man, it gonna
Speaker 1: cause the tree fold, letting five thousand miles away. Man,
Speaker 1: you think nobody seen nobody else, and you don't need
Speaker 1: no man.
Speaker 2: You follow the story and.
Speaker 1: You got back to flect that that's win. Man got
Speaker 1: black and dag on the panel. Man, Man, you don't
Speaker 1: don't matter.
Speaker 2: Man. You know, Carl, Uh, I don't know if people
Speaker 2: remembered that you and I are allowed to do uh
Speaker 2: structured numbered episodes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's uh, it's been a while. It's been a
Speaker 1: while having a topic planning ahead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's something to it. You know, maybe one
Speaker 2: day it'll catch on the uh. Although it's funny. I
Speaker 2: have been getting insistent dms from several people about you
Speaker 2: and I doing another gun broker show. Yeah, just find
Speaker 2: funny listenings.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I've been looking at those. But anyway, yes,
Speaker 1: it's a source of endless amusement. But as I sort
Speaker 1: of hint today, we were actually here to talk about
Speaker 1: a subject topic and that is one of my favorite films.
Speaker 1: The two thousand and seven Brazilian classic Elite Squad, also
Speaker 1: known as Trope a day Elite for reference, this is
Speaker 1: a large part of the team that would later go
Speaker 1: on to make I Believe City of God, and a
Speaker 1: lot of these guys have have become, you know, much
Speaker 1: more prominent filmmakers. This, as far as I understand, I'm
Speaker 1: Not Brazilian, is sort of seen as the Brazilian god Father, right,
Speaker 1: kind of the the archetypal Brazilian crime movie.
Speaker 2: I love the film. We'll obviously get into it, but
Speaker 2: just as kind of a broad overview, it concerns a
Speaker 2: actual Brazilian death squad. Bope, you have seen photos of
Speaker 2: these guys before. They do crazy stuff all the time,
Speaker 2: you know, primarily going after you know, narcos and criminal gangs.
Speaker 2: There was recently, as in a year and a half
Speaker 2: or two years ago, a big fight between actually several
Speaker 2: of the factions we see in this movie. I believe,
Speaker 2: I think it's called Red Faction, which is like a
Speaker 2: technically communist narco gang. And then Bope, we're talking like
Speaker 2: hundreds of casualties in urban warfare. You know, you've got
Speaker 2: like Brazilian guys with like Madsen machine guns just laying
Speaker 2: down fire and flavellas. So this is a fictionalized account,
Speaker 2: but only kind of. So anyway, Carl, I'm curious before
Speaker 2: we jump into it, had you ever seen this movie
Speaker 2: and what were your thoughts on it? I, you know what,
Speaker 2: I saw it a long time ago.
Speaker 1: I saw it when you were probably too young to
Speaker 1: read subtitles, and I was blown First of all, I
Speaker 1: was blown away with it because even twenty you know,
Speaker 1: well eighteen years ago, seventeen years ago when I would
Speaker 1: have seen I would have seen it around twenty ten probably,
Speaker 1: you know, this stuff was very well known. Brazil was
Speaker 1: the cautionary tale of what America would become. And people
Speaker 1: are destined to make us right like that it's being
Speaker 1: insisted upon. But instead of people living in favelas where
Speaker 1: they build you know, shanties that we of the kind
Speaker 1: that we see in this film, you know, in America,
Speaker 1: it's all paid for by, you know, from our taxes.
Speaker 1: The really interesting thing is Bope is a They are
Speaker 1: military police, but not in the sense in America when
Speaker 1: you think of MPs. They mostly focus on you know,
Speaker 1: handling members of the military, right whether it's on base
Speaker 1: or going off base to deal with them when they're
Speaker 1: getting getting a little wacky. No they are a basically
Speaker 1: public security but through the military, so they have a
Speaker 1: huge amount of a huge amount of leeway, let's say,
Speaker 1: in dealing with with things, and very villainized by the
Speaker 1: Brazilian lib tards, of which there are legion given given
Speaker 1: the state of Brazil and the fact that they've had
Speaker 1: they've been dealing with basically insurgencies for gosh, seventy eighty
Speaker 1: years in Brazil. So yeah, it's it's pretty wild stuff.
Speaker 1: And you know, the takeaway that I have from this film,
Speaker 1: there's takeaways that you can come to that are you know,
Speaker 1: top level like kind of like we were discussing before,
Speaker 1: you know, practical responses to reality, but then they're the
Speaker 1: main takeaway that I have is that Brazil is hell
Speaker 1: on Earth and you cannot let that happen here. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the broad plot to this, it's that the Pope
Speaker 2: is coming to Rome and he's going to stay with
Speaker 2: the archbishop near one of the most violent fabellas in Rio.
Speaker 2: And the joke is, of course, like you know, the
Speaker 2: Pope sleep can't be disturbed, and so effectively it's a
Speaker 2: it's a massive cleanup operation. We have sort of two
Speaker 2: main storylines.
Speaker 1: We have.
Speaker 2: He's me, I've got hiccups, which I'm sure will be
Speaker 2: incredibly annoying to listen to anyway, So, of course we
Speaker 2: have the kind of A and B plot. The established
Speaker 2: character is Captain Roberto Nacimento.
Speaker 1: Just off rip.
Speaker 2: You guys are aware I cannot pronounce I can barely
Speaker 2: pronounce English, let alone Portuguese, so bear with me. He
Speaker 2: is an established kind of bope commander and he has
Speaker 2: been looking for a replacement. His wife is pregnant. He's
Speaker 2: we find out of the course of the film, sort
Speaker 2: of developed a you know, a painkiller addiction to sort
Speaker 2: of cope with this. And so we see him looking
Speaker 2: for a successor, right, looking for someone who can sort of,
Speaker 2: you know, take his place in this grinding war with
Speaker 2: the cartel. And our B plot is the two other
Speaker 2: kind of main characters, these these rookie police officers Andre
Speaker 2: and Nito. Again, it's in Portuguese. We both watched it
Speaker 2: with subtitles because we're adults. There is an English version
Speaker 2: floating around. It is thoroughly adequate, but you know, I
Speaker 2: prefer the original. And the story begins sort of in
Speaker 2: media race, right. We'll get more backstory after this opening scene,
Speaker 2: and it is an all time great opening scene. Actually, Carl,
Speaker 2: I don't know if you remember all the way back
Speaker 2: when we had our conversation about your book Faction with
Speaker 2: the Crusaders by book, one of the things that I
Speaker 2: complimented on you, or complimented you on rather, was you
Speaker 2: had a really good, strong, opening scene, sort of set
Speaker 2: the mood. I didn't say it, but in my head,
Speaker 2: I was thinking, it's a lot like Elite Squad, where
Speaker 2: you have this incredible, you know, sort of action set
Speaker 2: piece that pulls you in and then later we explain
Speaker 2: how our characters got there, so obligatory by the book.
Speaker 2: It's good, it's interesting, probably the only direct relation between
Speaker 2: these two, at least for now. But I will say
Speaker 2: the scene is awesome. You have a group of different
Speaker 2: police officers sort of coming together in this block party.
Speaker 2: The song in the block party is is reprised several
Speaker 2: times through the movie. Yeah, it is so catchy, man,
Speaker 2: it's a it's an earworm.
Speaker 1: But it's awful too. It's it's yeah, exactly horrible, but
Speaker 1: but the rhythm of it is super catchy. It it
Speaker 1: is hell because if you and here's the thing is
Speaker 1: I took the time to look it up. It's a
Speaker 1: very famous song from the nineties of basically Favella gangsta rap,
Speaker 1: basically talking about it's rapta armas, so it's about guns
Speaker 1: and and so it's it's it's gangster nonsense, just with
Speaker 1: extra vowels appended to the end of every word. You
Speaker 1: know it it's like a beat, yeah, and a salsa
Speaker 1: beat and and and it's it is an earworm, but
Speaker 1: it's also horrible at the same time, which it which
Speaker 1: is this degrading, degrading third world experience that that is
Speaker 1: is so immersive in this movie. The lighting I was
Speaker 1: telling Jay before we started the lighting in this if
Speaker 1: you've ever spent time in the third world will give
Speaker 1: you you will be so immersed in this and you'll
Speaker 1: be having flashbacks and you're like, god, I hate this place.
Speaker 1: It's awful.
Speaker 2: And so what we see is there's sort of this
Speaker 2: roiling part already going on. You know, there's a stage
Speaker 2: and overlooking it. Again, the architecture is a strong word.
Speaker 2: The technical human constructions will go with that. Yes, is
Speaker 2: extremely accurate. Right, if you've ever been to South America
Speaker 2: and seeing these sort of in communities, but you have
Speaker 2: this sort of you know, party on the side of
Speaker 2: a slope, and up at the top there are some gangsters. Right,
Speaker 2: there's also a police car. And what we sort of
Speaker 2: realize is happening is that these police officers are effectively
Speaker 2: selling guns, right, I have that, correct, Carl, Yeah, correct,
Speaker 2: to these gangsters. So right from the beginning we are
Speaker 2: seeing this sort of endemic corruption within the police force.
Speaker 1: And in the part the important thing is in this party,
Speaker 1: in this favella, which is filled with hundreds of people
Speaker 1: of you know, let's say.
Speaker 2: You can'tically brillion Brazilian descent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, authentically Brazilian, and that you have no idea
Speaker 1: you you know that there's at least at least three
Speaker 1: races going on there. And it's smell crazy in there,
Speaker 1: and and the and the gangsters are like dancing with
Speaker 1: like M sixteen's and uh and like aks and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. It's it's crazy.
Speaker 2: And so as this this deal goes down, we see
Speaker 2: our two you know, ostensible main characters, right, uh, Nido
Speaker 2: and Andre uh looking down through a scoped rifle.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: They are not aware of what's really going on here, right,
Speaker 2: They just see you know, gangsters coming up with guns.
Speaker 2: The situation sort of escalates and they shoot one of
Speaker 2: the gangsters and all hell breaks loose instantly, well least
Speaker 2: start shooting, the gangsters start shooting. It is probably the
Speaker 2: closest relevant cinematic experience I could think is something like
Speaker 2: something like Blackhawk Down, but it is way less organized
Speaker 2: than that. Yes, you have people running. The guns in
Speaker 2: this are particularly interesting into a lot of actual Brazilian stuff.
Speaker 2: So some of the gangsters obviously have like you know,
Speaker 2: AC five five sixes, which is you know, a ruger
Speaker 2: you know, kind of mini fourteen auto mini oozzies. But
Speaker 2: I don't know if you picked up on this. The
Speaker 2: uh submachine gun that one of the corrupt cops is
Speaker 2: carrying is a Brazilian knockoff of the Danish Madson submachine gun. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: And I looked into it. It is the most comedically
Speaker 2: crude weapon in the world when I was looking into it.
Speaker 2: It is made of basically two like like stamped sheet
Speaker 2: steel shells that are just kind of held together, and
Speaker 2: then the nut that holds on the barrel also holds
Speaker 2: them together together. Apparently, I don't know anything about this.
Speaker 2: This is what the Internet tells me. Uh, you don't
Speaker 2: take it off the right way, it will dude across
Speaker 2: the room and yeah, vomit all the parts out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, because it has like a two pound
Speaker 1: square bolt. They're they're very they're very clever. And and
Speaker 1: the date it is the Danish Madsen. That was just
Speaker 1: some were made, some were made by Madson and provided
Speaker 1: there they have this old history with Brazil going back
Speaker 1: along ways. Then there was a local version and it's
Speaker 1: literally stampshell. There's like wing nuts on it and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. By the the folding stock and everything. It's
Speaker 1: incredibly crude and simple but worked very well. You can
Speaker 1: also see him in The Godfather. They have nine millimeter
Speaker 1: versions in The Godfather.
Speaker 2: So this just descends. We see our two main characters
Speaker 2: sort of frantically running through the favela. They're getting you know,
Speaker 2: closed in on. They're just firing blindly up and down
Speaker 2: these side alleys, and then Bope shows up and the
Speaker 2: whole scene changes, right, they're just again it's sort of
Speaker 2: like a real life version of you ever seen that
Speaker 2: movie gene Row, you know, the Wolf Brigade. They're basically
Speaker 2: a death squad. And after that scene wraps up, of course,
Speaker 2: and that's sort of you know, we see them, you know,
Speaker 2: see Bope, and it's like, oh wow, that was you know,
Speaker 2: this special unit I didn't even know about. We go
Speaker 2: back to, you know, both of these guys joining the
Speaker 2: police force, right in this kind of normal, just kind
Speaker 2: of run of the mill police station, and they're each
Speaker 2: assigned to very kind of you know, menial duties, right
Speaker 2: Nido I. He is put in charge of the police complaints,
Speaker 2: which is probably the closest thing to comedy in this movie.
Speaker 2: You know, both the absurd numbers of police planes and
Speaker 2: also just the blatant corruption. Like one of the things
Speaker 2: we see happen in this film is that anytime someone
Speaker 2: is killed, the first police that find it, they don't
Speaker 2: actually report it or do anything with it. They just
Speaker 2: move the body into someone else's district, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: They try to find an excuse or an explanation where
Speaker 1: they're like there wasn't there one where they're like, well,
Speaker 1: there's a river there and it probably came from it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's he's round. Well. The thing is the numbers are
Speaker 1: so high because again this is these favelas that are
Speaker 1: just run by these drug gangs. Their murder rate is
Speaker 1: crazy down there. It's just completely lawless. And that's really
Speaker 1: what they're trying. They're trying to really push this so
Speaker 1: that you so that you take this away and internalize
Speaker 1: it is that Bope is brutal, but they're the only honest,
Speaker 1: polite and competent police here. There's this whole element like
Speaker 1: at the same time where you know, one of the
Speaker 1: guys has to work in the auto shop, like maintaining
Speaker 1: the police cars, and like police officers will like have
Speaker 1: the engine, the good engine swapped out at a shop
Speaker 1: and pocket the difference in money that they get paid
Speaker 1: and have a crappy you know, like two hundred thousand
Speaker 1: mile engine put in and stuff. It's completely crazy, just constant.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: And the other the other officer, he's in the in
Speaker 2: the motor pool. And you know, one of the other
Speaker 2: things that you see is that like basically the the
Speaker 2: motor pool is, as you've said, completely dysfunctional, right, that
Speaker 2: people are stealing parts off of you know, the new cars.
Speaker 2: Everything is just a hodgepodge for a million different pieces.
Speaker 2: But the one thing that has to be perfectly maintained
Speaker 2: is the police chiefs car.
Speaker 1: Yeah, his motorcycle, yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: And it's it's just this kind of absurd level of corruption.
Speaker 2: And you know that one of the officers, uh you know,
Speaker 2: basically you know, goes out on patrol with you know,
Speaker 2: one of the you know, the higher ranking officials, and
Speaker 2: we see basically this large dispute over uh, you know,
Speaker 2: towing companies. That this in itself is a massive scam,
Speaker 2: right that the police officers are you know, towing cars,
Speaker 2: issuing tickets, pocketing the money and are as we've seen
Speaker 2: at the start of this movie in bed with you know,
Speaker 2: local gangsters, and in fact, we find out that that
Speaker 2: whole shootout basically started because they saw that you know,
Speaker 2: one of their coworkers was in bed right, that he
Speaker 2: was you know, meeting with local you know gangsters, that
Speaker 2: he was giving them weapons, that he was tipping them
Speaker 2: off as to when you know, the police were coming.
Speaker 2: And you know, these guys get incensed by it, and
Speaker 2: that's why after they you know, they attempt themselves to go,
Speaker 2: you know, follow this corrupt officer creates this giant shootout.
Speaker 2: They see Bobe come in and that's why they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: I want to join, right, So that's the the sort
Speaker 2: of plot component to that in the background, we find
Speaker 2: out that one of our characters, Nido is uh he
Speaker 2: is in law school, right, so he is played as
Speaker 2: very idealistic and he wants to basically, you know, go
Speaker 2: from being a street officer to a sort of like
Speaker 2: a prosecutor, right to sort of you know, continue his
Speaker 2: kind of fight against crime. And the scenes at the
Speaker 2: university are legitimately hilarious. Carl like this movie. There's a
Speaker 2: there's a cheap reading of this movie that it's about
Speaker 2: you know, police brutality, and it kind of is, but
Speaker 2: not really at all. It heaps scorn on the kind
Speaker 2: of Brazilian middle and upper classes you know, who go
Speaker 2: to university and love to read Fuko and talk about how,
Speaker 2: you know, criminal justice is just a way to to
Speaker 2: keep the to keep the little man down. But uh,
Speaker 2: do you want to talk about you know, his scenes
Speaker 2: at college because I like the probably some of the
Speaker 2: most interesting, you know, kind of dialogue in the film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I thought m on Andre is Andre Matias, right,
Speaker 1: is the is the based black who goes to law
Speaker 1: school and he and he's from the favelas he knows
Speaker 1: this world, and we find out that he wants to
Speaker 1: buy uh, he wants to take a kid who is
Speaker 1: involved in this program that some of the you know,
Speaker 1: the hot girls in law school with him, who are
Speaker 1: these upper middle class twits lib tards have this There's
Speaker 1: some sort of an NGO that they work for in
Speaker 1: the It's kind of nebulous as to what they actually do,
Speaker 1: although they have classes with kids and help them with
Speaker 1: homework and stuff like that, but it's basically done with
Speaker 1: the permission of the drug lord in the area. And
Speaker 1: so Andre Matias wants to get a pair of glasses.
Speaker 1: He wears these big, thick glasses, and he wants to
Speaker 1: get glasses for another kid who is basically like him
Speaker 1: as a child that he sees him that way, and
Speaker 1: so he has this perspective. He's like, I know the
Speaker 1: way these places work. I know where this comes from. Yes,
Speaker 1: they're a corrupt police, but there's also good police, and
Speaker 1: corrupt police doesn't excuse the crime and corruption that you
Speaker 1: see not only here but everywhere in our whole society.
Speaker 1: And all the lip chards are like no police bad.
Speaker 1: That's like literally there there the level of thought that
Speaker 1: they have, which is which is one of those things
Speaker 1: Jay that I think is really important that we need
Speaker 1: to internalize here is because there's this this delusion that
Speaker 1: that you hear expressed all the time on kind of
Speaker 1: the American I'll just broadly call it the right right
Speaker 1: where they say, you know, let things get bad enough.
Speaker 1: It's the it's the acceleration COPE. Let things get bad
Speaker 1: enough and then everyone will be outraged and will like
Speaker 1: stop it. And it's like no, Brazil, South Africa, like
Speaker 1: you have earnest libtards in these places who deal with
Speaker 1: this stuff all the time. You know, they see it
Speaker 1: all the time, but they still you know, make excuses
Speaker 1: and uh you know. So Andre Matias is like, no,
Speaker 1: no excuses. And he starts out being really quiet while
Speaker 1: this stuff is happening because he wants to fit in.
Speaker 1: He wants to you know, go with the flow. He
Speaker 1: doesn't want to argue constantly or he'll debate quietly. But
Speaker 1: it like escalates over time as it not only and
Speaker 1: that the way they put it in the film is
Speaker 1: not only because of his belief, but he becomes a
Speaker 1: member of BOPE and and he transforms into a warrior basically. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And one of the interesting things is that one of
Speaker 2: the corrupt officers who is sort of at the center
Speaker 2: of the shootout, because basically what we find out happens
Speaker 2: is that when our two main characters find out about
Speaker 2: the corruption, they effectively steal the bribe money, right and
Speaker 2: use that to actually fix up the motor pool. And
Speaker 2: this is blamed on the corrupt officer who ends up,
Speaker 2: you know, going into the Flabella actually sent there as punishment, right,
Speaker 2: because this is a dangerous duty by the higher ups.
Speaker 2: This guy also sort of goes to try out with
Speaker 2: Bope and the training montage is from what I've seen,
Speaker 2: because there's actually a decent amount of footage of this
Speaker 2: incredibly accurate, like even them, you know, doing things like
Speaker 2: standing in the swamp. You know, that's something that you
Speaker 2: can see in documentary footage, right, it's pretty much one
Speaker 2: to one accurate. But that process of weeding them out,
Speaker 2: one of the things that happens is that they're also
Speaker 2: being weeded out for corruption. And so this one officer,
Speaker 2: I can't remember his name, it's something, ends with an
Speaker 2: avowal and he is explicitly pulled out by Nacimento as corrupt.
Speaker 2: You know, he sends him home. So the interactions what
Speaker 2: we see is that basically throughout the film, Nido is
Speaker 2: living sort of a double life. He is not necessarily
Speaker 2: told his college friends that, you know, he is a
Speaker 2: police officer, and so at least initially they sort of
Speaker 2: he is. We see that sort of dissonance, right where
Speaker 2: these people who live in safegated communities and go to
Speaker 2: you know, an expensive school and then only venture into
Speaker 2: the Flabella's to basically do kind of self aggrandizing charity
Speaker 2: work have really no idea what it's like very clearly, uh,
Speaker 2: And it's kind of interesting because what we later find
Speaker 2: out sort of towards the climax of the film is
Speaker 2: that even these even these rich kids are there, they
Speaker 2: are the ones funding these these you know, drug trafficking, right,
Speaker 2: They're the ones buying drugs to use it parties. And
Speaker 2: you know, very explicitly we see the train from kind
Speaker 2: of like a small time college dealer to you know,
Speaker 2: the local drug kingpin, right, and that connection so you
Speaker 2: we'll get to it later, but sort of builds up
Speaker 2: to the kind of climactic conclusion of this film. But
Speaker 2: I think it's interesting that for a movie ostensibly about
Speaker 2: you know, unaccountable police violence, and you know, that is
Speaker 2: often how it has read, particularly in the West, the
Speaker 2: people causing so many of these problems are basically college
Speaker 2: educated libtards.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, They are the.
Speaker 2: Ones who, out of one side of their mouth are
Speaker 2: restricting the ability of violence to sort of set order
Speaker 2: to this and then also funding it through their kind
Speaker 2: of own like Libertine ends. And I think that it's
Speaker 2: the conclusion to this film is interesting, and like I said,
Speaker 2: we'll get to it, but basically it is about the
Speaker 2: process of hardening yourself to the point where you can
Speaker 2: become the sort of the kind of man who can
Speaker 2: restore order, and that happens. There's there's no half measure
Speaker 2: that will solve any of these problems. And certainly the
Speaker 2: film is part is fatalistic, right, because the system is
Speaker 2: so corrupt and so violent. But I think that that,
Speaker 2: you know, is really the soul of the film is
Speaker 2: we're watching Neto over the course of it sort of
Speaker 2: shed his idealism, right, shed this sort of unrealistic dream about,
Speaker 2: you know, being a poor kid from a favella, than
Speaker 2: a police officer, than a than a prosecutor. His realization
Speaker 2: is basically, I have to become a killer, like that
Speaker 2: is the way that you know, I can fight this
Speaker 2: and fix this because evil must be stamped out. That
Speaker 2: is the conclusion, right. It's it's an oddly I mean
Speaker 2: say this euphemistically, Carl, but it's it's sort of a
Speaker 2: fascistic film. It is.
Speaker 1: No, I agree completely, and and that's the that's the
Speaker 1: whole thing with the film is everything they they are
Speaker 1: proven right every step of the way. You know, you know,
Speaker 1: the the meme that came to my mind is dehumanize
Speaker 1: yourself and face to bloodshed, right, and that's that's literally
Speaker 1: the solution to all this because they they go into
Speaker 1: a they go into a I'll charitably call it a
Speaker 1: rooftop hut where there's a where there's a kid who
Speaker 1: has a pair of shoes that cost like three hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty dollars and it's the only like clean, bright
Speaker 1: thing in the room, right, Like everything else looks like shit.
Speaker 1: It's all like fourth hand discarded trash. He sleeps on
Speaker 1: what we could uphemistically refer to as like a straw
Speaker 1: mattress at best. It's just it's it's it's barely a hovel.
Speaker 1: A hovel is charitable and they're like, where did you
Speaker 1: get these shoes? And they know where you got these shoes.
Speaker 1: He works for the drug dealers, right. The libtards would say, well,
Speaker 1: he has no other opportunities. You know, it's society, et cetera.
Speaker 1: You know, why why would why would he have shoot?
Speaker 1: You know, he can't do the whole logical thing of
Speaker 1: where he would spend this this money in a more
Speaker 1: in a better way to take care of his family
Speaker 1: and improve their conditions. Because of the conditions they're in.
Speaker 1: This is a thing that he wants. As Selene Dion
Speaker 1: would say, let them touch those things, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: so he's basically anocent kid. Bope says, well, you're gonna
Speaker 1: tell us, And so they slap them around a little bit.
Speaker 1: And then they what what is the term that they
Speaker 1: use in the film. They say, bag him or something
Speaker 1: like that, which involves taking a you know, disregarding the
Speaker 1: the label, they take the plastic bag and put it
Speaker 1: over his head and suffocate him in a rather graphic
Speaker 1: fashion for maybe ten twelve seconds while wrenching him around
Speaker 1: violently so that he starts huffing and puffing and it's
Speaker 1: a highly unpleasant experience. And then they take it off
Speaker 1: his head and ask him slap him around a little
Speaker 1: bit he doesn't talk. Well, they do it a third
Speaker 1: time and he talks. So the crazy thing is every
Speaker 1: stage of this movie, their intensification of violence is justified
Speaker 1: by the outcomes that they get because they didn't actually
Speaker 1: kill him, They didn't permanently harm him by doing this, right,
Speaker 1: they let him go. They have a thing earlier with
Speaker 1: the kid who's a lookout who the gang then murders,
Speaker 1: right because he talked. And it's very touching because the
Speaker 1: mother comes to our police captain Nacimento and when he
Speaker 1: has a child on the way and is like, I
Speaker 1: need to know where my son's body is so that
Speaker 1: we can bury him. That's another really important element of
Speaker 1: this is there's a is like taking care of the body,
Speaker 1: treating the body with respect, having a funeral, like that
Speaker 1: closure that you get from it, you know, in the
Speaker 1: positive sense, motivates this captain to go out into the
Speaker 1: favelas to just try to find this child's body, to
Speaker 1: figure out what happens to him, so the mother can
Speaker 1: have closure, so that he can have closure as his
Speaker 1: child is on the way, so that you can like
Speaker 1: quit this job in the way that he's promised his wife,
Speaker 1: who is unbearably nagging in this film. She is she
Speaker 1: is very annoying, but it's understandable also.
Speaker 2: And I'm glad you brought that up, because that is
Speaker 2: also a distinction we see between uh obviously like Bope
Speaker 2: and the police and also uh, you know, the we'll
Speaker 2: just say like the Narcos, right because like, don't get
Speaker 2: me wrong, they're both they're both savage. Like in that
Speaker 2: that scene with you know, when they bag someone. Uh,
Speaker 2: there is also a show is a highly disturbing threat
Speaker 2: made with a broom handle, yuh, which they didn't do,
Speaker 2: but uh, you know, it certainly motivated him to talk,
Speaker 2: but they do let him go afterwards, and we see
Speaker 2: over and over again the NARCO is obviously, you know,
Speaker 2: killing anyone who speaks with the police. But you know,
Speaker 2: even in the kind of you know, climactic moments of
Speaker 2: this film, even on Suspicion, kill people in horrific ways.
Speaker 2: So obviously media not quite a third, but a large
Speaker 2: portion of this is about uh, you know, the Bope training, right,
Speaker 2: these guys becoming you know, members of this this sort
Speaker 2: of you know, death squad, and it's one of the
Speaker 2: all time great sort of you know training you know
Speaker 2: arcs in a city like this. Yeah, like almost immediately,
Speaker 2: you know, we see our characters brought out to this
Speaker 2: kind of tent in the middle of nowhere, and they're
Speaker 2: getting shark tanked. You know. All the guys are running up,
Speaker 2: you know, punching them, you know, yelling in their face.
Speaker 1: And then we see a.
Speaker 2: Really interesting scene where all of the recruits are basically
Speaker 2: going through sleep deprivation. So they're like in a classroom
Speaker 2: sort of and you know, Nito falls asleep and the
Speaker 2: officers hands him presumably a live hand grenade, pulls the
Speaker 2: pin and tells him to hold it to keep a lake.
Speaker 2: We we also see, you know, in this sort of section,
Speaker 2: we see them you know, doing you know, long marches,
Speaker 2: you know, going through the jungle, standing in swamps, lots
Speaker 2: of lots of footage of trench foot which is accurately rendered,
Speaker 2: and we're seeing this group sort of constantly. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: it's this is not a this is not a film
Speaker 2: for the whole family on a multitude of different metrics.
Speaker 2: But yeah, if you're sent whatever that it's not triggonosis.
Speaker 2: That's what you get from eating raw pork whatever. The
Speaker 2: phobia is of a small holes, not a great one
Speaker 2: for that.
Speaker 1: Uh oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Actually, really this is just a a that if this
Speaker 2: movie was in a culture where trigger warnings were popular,
Speaker 2: like it was in kind of like the twenty nineteen
Speaker 2: to like twenty twenty one range, it would be all
Speaker 2: of them. There's quite simply nothing that isn't in it.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: But you know, as these guys you know kind of
Speaker 2: winnow down, we see you know, these these officers becoming
Speaker 2: more and more competent, more and more hardened. They move
Speaker 2: from just getting beat down to you know, doing drills
Speaker 2: with weapons, to being brought on on you know missions,
Speaker 2: you know again these kind of like urban warfare operations,
Speaker 2: and you know, once they finally graduated, are our sort
Speaker 2: of secondary character. Uh. You know, Nido, he gets a
Speaker 2: boupe tattoo once he's he's finally graduated on his arm,
Speaker 2: which turns out to be turns out to be very relevant.
Speaker 2: So after you know, they go through the you know,
Speaker 2: bope training, after the corrupt officer is you know, is out, Uh, basically,
Speaker 2: Andre and his you know kind of art ho law
Speaker 2: school girlfriend, their relationship blows up. She is aware he
Speaker 2: was captured you know, on photo as being a member
Speaker 2: of you know, bope what she believes that this sort
Speaker 2: of death squad, and so, you know, she breaks up
Speaker 2: with him. He's now a social pariah. We see that
Speaker 2: everyone is aware of this. They don't want anything to
Speaker 2: do with him. So he sort of just decided, you know,
Speaker 2: all right, I'm gonna hoist the black flag like we're
Speaker 2: we're out there. And this kind of small town dealer,
Speaker 2: the one that's you know, supplying weed primarily to the
Speaker 2: college kids, we know that, you know that Andreas picked
Speaker 2: up on this, right, so he goes and confronts him.
Speaker 2: He basically you know, slaps him around, you know, basically
Speaker 2: says like you know, demands information from him, and this
Speaker 2: information makes its way back to the local drug kingpin.
Speaker 2: Right he knows, oh wait, you know, not only has
Speaker 2: one of my dealers presumably given information to uh, you know,
Speaker 2: to the police, but we find out that this NGO,
Speaker 2: which is also connected to the same to the same
Speaker 2: drug kingpin, he's sort of whitewashing his image through it.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Well, our main character is going into the Favella to
Speaker 2: finally give this little.
Speaker 1: Boy a pair of glasses.
Speaker 2: So he's going to be on his own, alone and
Speaker 2: vulnerable and at the last minute, Andre can't make it,
Speaker 2: so Nido goes into the pafella to give the glasses
Speaker 2: to the little boy or his friend, right, and the Kingpin,
Speaker 2: not knowing of course that he is a part of
Speaker 2: BOPE or that he's got the wrong man, sets up
Speaker 2: an ambush and you know, Nito's gunn down. He's killed,
Speaker 2: and there's this very cinematic moment where they run up
Speaker 2: to the body and they look at his forearm and
Speaker 2: see the BOPE tattoo and realize like, oh no, we're
Speaker 2: were were screwed, right, we have made a mistake. But
Speaker 2: also at the same time, the cartel is basically moved
Speaker 2: to a sweep up this kind of in these NGO
Speaker 2: workers who they think have been compromised and uh, this
Speaker 2: is m perhaps the darkest moment of the film. They're
Speaker 2: you know, they're grabbed at gunpoint and one of the
Speaker 2: girls is executed, and the guy who's running this like
Speaker 2: clinic or ngo or whatever, uh is uh stuffed into
Speaker 2: a roll of tires and set on fire. It's a
Speaker 2: very very grim scene.
Speaker 1: It's brutal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but this of course sets us up for the
Speaker 2: final confrontation. Right, we've already been part of this kind
Speaker 2: of rolling anti crime wave to make things you know,
Speaker 2: clear for the pope. But also a boupe officer has
Speaker 2: been killed, and two of the you know kind of
Speaker 2: like middle to upper classes have also been brutally murdered
Speaker 2: execution style. So the stakes are the stakes are high.
Speaker 2: I went through a lot of plot there, Carl, And
Speaker 2: forgive me for being slightly less linear with this, but
Speaker 2: this movie isn't super linear. I was going hard to follow,
Speaker 2: but it's not like, you know, it's not like You're
Speaker 2: Of the Dragon, where it's one plot all the way
Speaker 2: through and you can just sort of rattle through it.
Speaker 2: It sort of loops back on itself. But I'll give
Speaker 2: you a chance to respond, Carl And I.
Speaker 1: Did watch Here the Dragon when you guys were talking
Speaker 1: about it, so that I had seen it, because I
Speaker 1: saw it probably thirty years ago, so that I had
Speaker 1: seen it by the time I listened to the show
Speaker 1: you did with Pete. But anyway, yes, this brings us
Speaker 1: back to that we've established exactly what is led up
Speaker 1: to the opening scene, which is so great. So now
Speaker 1: it all makes sense. Now you're like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: now this makes sense. Here's this unit that acts like
Speaker 1: of police bope that acts like an infantry squad, whereas
Speaker 1: all the others are all these other cops and we
Speaker 1: know their backgrounds, we know why they were sent out there,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But you also know that this is going
Speaker 1: to be completely insane because because because they're going loaded
Speaker 1: for bear and they're they're basically like, we have to
Speaker 1: kill this guy. Like they're not. They're not going in
Speaker 1: to be like, let's make arrests and everything like that.
Speaker 1: They're like, no, We're going to have to go kill
Speaker 1: these guys, and uh, which is it? Which is just
Speaker 1: you know, from a from a perspective as a film viewer,
Speaker 1: highly entertaining, and you're like this, I know that this
Speaker 1: is going to be good, and we're also going to
Speaker 1: get a lot of stuff that we didn't see and
Speaker 1: in that earlier film part of the film to round
Speaker 1: it out, So a lot.
Speaker 2: Of this basically obviously there is you know Nido's funeral
Speaker 2: where you know Naciamento who and we hadn't mentioned this,
Speaker 2: but had basically been looking to Nido as his successor. Yeah,
Speaker 2: another you know, squeaky clean, highly motivated, highly competent, a
Speaker 2: new guy that could eventually beat his success.
Speaker 1: But point out, can I point out also European presenting,
Speaker 1: there's there is a very interesting racial element in this
Speaker 1: film to where to where Nito there's something about him
Speaker 1: where like the bureaucrats who are also you know, Iberian,
Speaker 1: let's say broadly deal with him like as kind of
Speaker 1: a regular guy, and andre Is is black. You know,
Speaker 1: he's in law school and all that. But there's but
Speaker 1: that seems like that's like not on the table with
Speaker 1: the other officers, you know, in the organization, but it's
Speaker 1: not really it's not really expressed. And so to me,
Speaker 1: this screams that there's something going on there in the film,
Speaker 1: like behind that, but no one ever says it. They
Speaker 1: don't do the whole thing. Well, it's because Brazil's racist,
Speaker 1: they don't do that, which is very interesting. It's very interesting.
Speaker 1: But to your point, Nito blows it in his kind
Speaker 1: of like final training that you mentioned earlier, where they
Speaker 1: actually go in to a bombed out hellscape like it
Speaker 1: I think it's a I think it's a favella that
Speaker 1: was being bulldozed and there's still you know, drug gang holdouts,
Speaker 1: and it's literally like there's the guy with a rifle
Speaker 1: shoot him, right. It's literally that kind of an operation,
Speaker 1: and he does a very bad job of it, Like
Speaker 1: he ends up like out on his own, kind of
Speaker 1: like not staying with everyone else. It's kind of incoherent.
Speaker 1: It happens really quickly, but Nacimento is like, this guy
Speaker 1: isn't the guy and and so, which is another burden
Speaker 1: on Nacimento because you know, his wife is nagging him.
Speaker 1: I can't remember if his baby is born yet at
Speaker 1: this point in time, but.
Speaker 2: I think at this point she's actually left. She's gone
Speaker 2: to go live with her mother.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, but like, but he's also like, I have
Speaker 1: to be done with this, Like he doesn't want to
Speaker 1: do this anymore, or at least he says he doesn't
Speaker 1: want to do this anymore.
Speaker 2: So the last sort of civilian scene we see after
Speaker 2: the funeral is I mean, it's basically Andre breaking bad.
Speaker 2: So he finds out this rich kid drug dealer that
Speaker 2: he roughed up, ratted him out and got his friend killed,
Speaker 2: and he goes to a like a peace march, right
Speaker 2: like something you'd imagine it like one of the No
Speaker 2: No Kings, you know, protests that are kicking off in
Speaker 2: the middle of it just walks and it starts just
Speaker 2: wailing on this guy. It's it's a great scene screaming
Speaker 2: at him, trying to get information on it. And we've
Speaker 2: seen kind of in this build up and it's sort
Speaker 2: of interspersed between the last two scenes. We were talking
Speaker 2: about Bope going around to other dealers, torturing them to
Speaker 2: find out the identity of this this drug kingpin and
Speaker 2: uh whose name is uh.
Speaker 1: Something Britz, I think, but I can't remember.
Speaker 2: I won't say it. And so now they know, right,
Speaker 2: they're looking for this guy. This is sort of him
Speaker 2: fully discarding any pretense of you know, indexing with the
Speaker 2: system in that way, he's a full and total social para.
Speaker 2: And so now they're on the hunt stone cold in
Speaker 2: cell On, he's he's set aside women. He only desires revenge.
Speaker 2: And the final confrontation is very well done. But the
Speaker 2: way this movie ends, and when we see you know,
Speaker 2: Andrea sort of become Nasimento, right, he has fully sort
Speaker 2: of shed his humanity is you know, the dealer at
Speaker 2: the end, he's he's wounded and Nacimento hands a massan
Speaker 2: off shotgun. It's basically like, all right, you know what
Speaker 2: you need to do, and the dealer's on the ground.
Speaker 2: And this is the reprisal of that theme earlier we
Speaker 2: mentioned about about bodies right in the Importance of Funeral,
Speaker 2: he basically just says like, all right, you know, just
Speaker 2: just not in the face. I want my mom to
Speaker 2: be able to see me, and for the wake, for
Speaker 2: the wake, for the wake, and Andre levels the gun
Speaker 2: right at his face, cut to black. You hear a boom.
Speaker 2: So there's a little bit of ambiguity there, right, did
Speaker 2: he did he still have any mercy left? Or was
Speaker 2: he you know, sort of a true you know, stone
Speaker 2: cold killer at that point. I my version of it, Uh,
Speaker 2: just all in a genuinely great film. And like I said, thematically,
Speaker 2: what we're seeing is you know, Andre being stripped of
Speaker 2: his of his idealism, right, stripped of this idea that
Speaker 2: he can ascend up the social ladder, stripped of this
Speaker 2: idea that you know, he can can meet with the
Speaker 2: kind of you know, upper crust of society and do
Speaker 2: real good. The less of this film is ultimately it's like, no,
Speaker 2: the only way this can be solved is to stamp
Speaker 2: them out. It is to quote Rothbert right, to send
Speaker 2: in the hounds. And in order to do that, you
Speaker 2: can't be squishy. This cannot be half measures. It needs
Speaker 2: to be you know, brutal and uncompromising. And as I
Speaker 2: said earlier, sure there's a certain amount of fatalism to this, right,
Speaker 2: this irreparably broken system. But if we're looking at kind
Speaker 2: of the lessons for our guys, right, the things that
Speaker 2: we would find interesting in this film. One, obviously, the
Speaker 2: social critique of educated progressives is kind of funny, but
Speaker 2: also right, the idea that like mercy in defense of
Speaker 2: criminals as advice, that's what enables these sort of situations
Speaker 2: and to solve those issues, right, to solve that kind
Speaker 2: of deep corruption, it's like, well, you need killers, you
Speaker 2: need people who are sort of beyond human, they don't
Speaker 2: have morality in the same way that we do. To
Speaker 2: accomplish that end. And in order to do that, there's
Speaker 2: sort of no there's no half measures. Personally, you can't
Speaker 2: still have you know, your normal life where you hang
Speaker 2: out with your progressive friend, like it has to become
Speaker 2: your life, and that is your sort of purpose on
Speaker 2: the world is to be sort of a you know,
Speaker 2: a killer on behalf of the state it's a it's
Speaker 2: a really fascinating film. One of the things that we
Speaker 2: didn't mention is that Nacimento is constantly in and out
Speaker 2: of sort of you know, state mandated therapy, right with
Speaker 2: like basically an HR lady who is completely and totally
Speaker 2: hopeless in this film. You know, she's asking him the
Speaker 2: most kind of absurd, out of touch questions, you know,
Speaker 2: telling him like, oh, if you report anything, I'll have
Speaker 2: to take it up the chain of command. You will
Speaker 2: be kicked out of your job.
Speaker 1: Sort of.
Speaker 2: The ineffectuality of that kind of like managerial style in
Speaker 2: a situation like this, it's it is absurd, right, The
Speaker 2: idea that you know, one minute, he's you know, in
Speaker 2: like three hundred and sixty degree urban combat with you know,
Speaker 2: drug dealers, with Oozzi's, and then you know, when he
Speaker 2: gets back he has to answer questions about his emotional state.
Speaker 2: Another element that I wanted to bring up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know this, it's the stress of the job.
Speaker 1: It's the stress of you know, his his nagging wife,
Speaker 1: who is nagging for a good reason. You know, they
Speaker 1: have a baby on the way. What he does is
Speaker 1: incredibly dangerous and you know, obviously he's a different person
Speaker 1: than he than he was before. But it is this
Speaker 1: level of obliviousness where he's like, just give me a
Speaker 1: drug for it or something like that, you know, And
Speaker 1: there's one other there's one other thing that that he does,
Speaker 1: which again comes back to that funeral topic that keeps
Speaker 1: coming up as far as like separating them from the norm,
Speaker 1: and it's the it's Nido's funeral, which is very touching.
Speaker 1: You know, everyone goes out there and they're all they're
Speaker 1: very they're furious at this point, right, like the Bope
Speaker 1: guys are furious, and the you know, his casket is
Speaker 1: there and it's covered with the Brazilian flag, and Nasciamento
Speaker 1: walks up and unfurls the Baupe flag and puts it
Speaker 1: over it. And what is the Boupet flag. It's red
Speaker 1: and black with a skull and a golden dagger and
Speaker 1: two crossed pistols behind it. And so he comes in
Speaker 1: and he's basically like, let me remind everybody what this
Speaker 1: is about. Like, he's our guy, he was one of us.
Speaker 1: We accepted him. Ultimately, he was accepted. He didn't he
Speaker 1: wasn't making the cut, you know, to be to take over.
Speaker 1: But he was still one of our guys, and I
Speaker 1: don't really care about your norms. For his funeral, he
Speaker 1: was one of us. Which is incredibly interesting because if
Speaker 1: you if you notice, like it kind of upsets the civilians,
Speaker 1: like his family and stuff like that back there, the
Speaker 1: women are like taken aback by it, but all the
Speaker 1: men just get hardened and they're just they're just stone
Speaker 1: faced at that point.
Speaker 2: So several interesting things about the history of Because there
Speaker 2: are several elite Squad movies. Uh, I haven't seen any
Speaker 2: of them. I sort of like how this stands on
Speaker 2: its own. Yeah, I'm sure you've had the same experience, Carl,
Speaker 2: where it's like, I don't want to be let down
Speaker 2: by something other than this, you know, it's sort of
Speaker 2: the this yeah. Perfect. But what's interesting is that it's
Speaker 2: actually based on a book, and it's based on a
Speaker 2: book by two former operators, Bope operators and a sociologist. Right,
Speaker 2: And it seems as if there's basically no relation to
Speaker 2: whatsoever between the plot of the book and the plot
Speaker 2: of the movie. The plot of the book is basically
Speaker 2: about how like Beaupe or a bunch of like gross
Speaker 2: meanis who hate democracy and beat people up sometimes, and
Speaker 2: the movie is like, Bope is a bunch of super
Speaker 2: cool dudes who beat people up all the time, because yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: which I think is is an interesting note. But from
Speaker 2: what I could see, and I am not Brazili and
Speaker 2: I cannot read Portuguese, but it does seem as if
Speaker 2: there's sort of a an echo of our high and
Speaker 2: low alignment on the issue of crime enforcement in Brazil
Speaker 2: as there is in America, where it is sort of
Speaker 2: fashionable in elite circles to you know, look down on that. Truly,
Speaker 2: wherever you go, the progressives are exactly the same. We
Speaker 2: mentioned some of the you know, the weapons in this
Speaker 2: you know obviously you have you know, the madicine that
Speaker 2: isn't like super prominent, but it's like probably the most
Speaker 2: interesting or unique we've got all the all the nineties classics, right,
Speaker 2: You've got a couple of really cool seeds with Nazi
Speaker 2: Vento with an MP five ooozies. Of course, a bunch
Speaker 2: of you know, horrible Taurus knockoffs of much better firearms.
Speaker 2: But the my and it's not ever given a lot
Speaker 2: of screen time, of course, is uh, you know, the
Speaker 2: guy's running CQB with a full length you know, m
Speaker 2: bel f a L which is yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And one of the things I noticed also is
Speaker 1: the when when there's the sniping scene, you know at
Speaker 1: the at the beginning, he it's a it's a Brazilian mouser.
Speaker 1: So it's the same rifle that they're using in their
Speaker 1: training scenes, which are probably pretty much just you know,
Speaker 1: rusted shut in the training but they you know, but
Speaker 1: in this one, so he has that and then it
Speaker 1: has like a forward like scout mount scope, so it's
Speaker 1: you know, super forward glass where that you know, the rear,
Speaker 1: the rear of it is in front of the action
Speaker 1: so that you can load stripper clips and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: I was like, hell, yeah, super great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is one of my favorite films. I was talking.
Speaker 2: I think I said this off air that it's part
Speaker 2: of one of my favorite unofficial movie subgenres, which is
Speaker 2: movies where guns are scary. Because the violence in the
Speaker 2: combat in this is exceptionally lethal. Yeah, people you know,
Speaker 2: drop quickly.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's not the sort of like John Wu style, you know,
Speaker 2: thousands of squibs going off. It feels very grounded. The
Speaker 2: cinematography in it is very much a product of its
Speaker 2: time for good and ill. You mentioned of course, the uh,
Speaker 2: you know, the lighting in this is extremely true to form, right,
Speaker 2: the kind of like sickly you know, greens and yellows,
Speaker 2: especially in the Flavella's one thing. And this is polarizing.
Speaker 2: I don't mind it, but some people really hate it.
Speaker 2: Is it has the very mid two thousands shaky cam
Speaker 2: right like you saw in the Bode movies and stuff
Speaker 2: like that, which certainly does add to sort of the
Speaker 2: frenetic pace of it. But one of the guys I
Speaker 2: was watching with it was like, dude, I can't look
Speaker 2: at this. My eyes are about to like I'm gonna
Speaker 2: throw up. So it's a minority position, but something to
Speaker 2: be aware of. The soundtrack to this movie, as we've
Speaker 2: already mentioned, some of it is kind of popular Brazilian
Speaker 2: movie music from the late nineties. Other of it is
Speaker 2: you know, moral orchestral is quite good if you're interested
Speaker 2: in that. And this movie is super easy to find.
Speaker 2: I think it's on Amazon if you're willing to sail
Speaker 2: the high seas because it's in Brazil. Of course, you
Speaker 2: can find a copy of it at your favorite website,
Speaker 2: but I'd highly recommend it It's very watchable. If you
Speaker 2: know you're you enjoy those kind of you crime movies,
Speaker 2: this is a very good one.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: The thematically, it's very tight, the messaging is very much
Speaker 2: aligned to your interests if you're listening to this. And
Speaker 2: also it's just a cool I wouldn't say low budget,
Speaker 2: but kind of mid budget movie. And yeah, I highly
Speaker 2: recommend it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great. It's it's totally worth watching it. Again,
Speaker 1: Like I said before, it is a cautionary tale. It
Speaker 1: is absolutely a cautionary tale. There's something else that I noticed.
Speaker 1: I just have a little I scribbled it down, and
Speaker 1: it's worth mentioning. Every police officer's uniform has you know,
Speaker 1: like in the military, you have your last name on
Speaker 1: a patch and then it has their blood type right
Speaker 1: after it, which is totally makes sense. And it follows
Speaker 1: the theme of the movie, which is that they are
Speaker 1: they're going to be bleeding. They're going to be bleeding.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it is. The police are not superheroes
Speaker 2: in this, and I think it's important to mention, right,
Speaker 2: there are very real critiques of the police in this.
Speaker 2: It's in fact, much of the inciting motivation is the
Speaker 2: insane level of petty corruption, you know, going down to
Speaker 2: things like there is you know, a scene of police
Speaker 2: officers moving a body from one district to another. They're
Speaker 2: again very managerial, this whole system designed to not actually
Speaker 2: do anything but simply make it look better, you know,
Speaker 2: so you know, reporting murders as drowning victims or drug overdoses,
Speaker 2: you know, anything they can to you know, basically dodge
Speaker 2: responsibility for that. And again that creates the necessity for
Speaker 2: this sort of like we could almost say like odanic figure,
Speaker 2: you know, or this kind of like heroic figure that is,
Speaker 2: you know, Bope, and by extension, our main characters who
Speaker 2: you basically sidestep all of that, you know, who go
Speaker 2: and sort of meet evil on its own terms instead
Speaker 2: of trying to you know, manage it out of the
Speaker 2: exists the uh and I realize people are understandably annoyed
Speaker 2: by you know, quote unquote social commentary. It's it is
Speaker 2: certainly there. It is interesting, it is well expressed and
Speaker 2: not didactic. And also if you just want to watch
Speaker 2: a movie where guys shoot each other, you got that too.
Speaker 2: So yeah, Carl, I really enjoyed talking with you about
Speaker 2: this movie. It's one of my favorites. Uh, and honestly,
Speaker 2: I they're you know, the the Last Things Film Festival
Speaker 2: has been permanently shuttered. But I did do a review
Speaker 2: on it for that.
Speaker 1: Uh, that's right a year ago. Uh. I did movies
Speaker 1: with him.
Speaker 2: I really wish one did you do well?
Speaker 1: I did? I did The Killer and Hard Boiled, but
Speaker 1: but generally so good, generally talked about about John Wu
Speaker 1: and the uh the message of globalism in these films,
Speaker 1: in his films of the era. Yeah, the uh, I.
Speaker 2: Will say, my favorite Wo movie is Face Off. But
Speaker 2: that is a ridiculous film.
Speaker 1: It's It's totally ridiculous. John John Wu's movies are ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Most of them are not very good, like his older
Speaker 1: ones are not very good. That he was just cranking
Speaker 1: them out. But yeah, I face Off is Face Off
Speaker 1: is worth watching. It's it's insane and it and it
Speaker 1: gives you everything that you would expect from And John.
Speaker 2: There's a my this is unrelated. Maybe we'll come back
Speaker 2: to it, but uh, my brother in law, who I
Speaker 2: guess you have spoken too briefly, Carl, for unrelated purposes
Speaker 2: is uh super into uh like Prestige Hong Kong Cinema
Speaker 2: so like, like you know, chun King express all of
Speaker 2: that stuff.
Speaker 1: That's it's more than that.
Speaker 2: And that's just the one that I can remember, because
Speaker 2: I'll be honest, a lot of these movies are sort
Speaker 2: of passed me. But yeah, it's a very interesting cinematic
Speaker 2: culture discussion for another day. We're supposed to be talking
Speaker 2: about Elite Squad, aren't we.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, there are a lot of movies that are good. Well, Carl,
Speaker 2: thank you so much. This is a fascinating discussion. I've
Speaker 2: mentioned to the fact that you have a book Faction
Speaker 2: with the Crusader and then another one. You should read them. Obviously,
Speaker 2: your substack, your Twitter, You and I do mostly live streams.
Speaker 2: I assume everyone is familiar with you. Is there anything
Speaker 2: else I missed?
Speaker 1: No, I think that covers it.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I would love to close my commentary with a ringing
Speaker 1: endorsement from a critic of this film that was published
Speaker 1: in Variety by one Jay Weissberg, who called the movie
Speaker 1: a quote one note celebration of violence for good hyphening
Speaker 1: did that plays like a recruitment film for fascist thugs.
Speaker 1: End quote. Thank you, M. M.