Monday, April 28, 2008

Send a Bullet


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbff7PBDUP8

I watched "Manda Bala (Send a Bullet)" the other night, the documentary that work the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

The producer, Jason Cohn, said that "I really thought of Manda Bala as a non-fiction Robocop depicting a very real broken and violent society."

It was not a perfect film, but I felt it engrossing as a look at the class warfare that exists in Brasil. It deals with some of the same themes as "City of God," a dramatic film based on a true story, but in documentary form. It begins with a few apparently unconnected stories and, not surprisingly, weaves them together by the end of the film. It was astounding how much damage the corrupt Jader Barbalho was able to inflict upon the country and citizens of Brasil. No one seems to know exactly how much money was siphoned away from projects supposed to improve the economy of Northern Brasil, but most reports put it at well over 1 billion.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1825076.stm