Elite Squad: The Enemy Within

This sequel netted Brazil's biggest-ever box office return with its portrayal of corrupt police and even more corrupt politicians in Rio de Janeiro. A sunken-eyed Wagner Moura plays Lt-Col Nascimento, the commander of an elite, SWAT-style police unit, who, after a bloody prison raid, is promoted to a desk job overseeing the city's security apparatus. He quickly finds his hard-edged, often brutal moral code is ill-suited to the murky world of politics, and the endemic graft begins to push him over the edge.

This sweeping, violent story of police militias taking over the slums of Rio is told at a breakneck pace. The insistent handheld camerawork and fast cutting mean that the filmmakers at times rely too heavily on voiceover to keep the audience on track. But there is a raw urgency to their portrait of a city on the make, held back only by a corrupt public life, which echoes the best of the American gangster flicks of the 1930s. [Keir Roper-Caldbeck]