Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within

Some labelled director José Padilha a fascist for his brutal account of Brazilian crime and (violent) punishment in the Golden Bear winning Elite Squad (2008). His sequel may reverse this judgement.

Twelve years have passed in this Rio story but the bullets are still flying and, almost immediately, we're thrown into the heart of a brilliantly staged high security prison riot. Under Lt. Colonel Nascimento (played with soul by Wagner Moura) and his Special Military Police (BOPE)'s charge, it turns into a bloodbath. The ensuing media and political storm blows Nascimiento up the chain to Secretary of Security, from where Rio’s rotten core soon exposes itself, and bares its teeth.

Padilha’s pace is unrelenting. You can’t fit a shiv between scenes as he crams a Wire-sized tableau of corruption and violence into 115-minutes. Annoyingly, his catalyst is an almost constant voiceover which haemorrhages much of the drama but, in his kaleidoscopic exposé of Rio politics and crime, Padilha delivers a bruising right and left of polemic and action. [Danny Scott]