In 1997, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was a city of slums ripped up, rundown and ruled by drug lords. The city’s police force is out numbered by hundreds and under funded by millions, who ultimately accept payoffs and bribes to looks the other way while the dealers circulate their products throughout the streets. The few honest cops that are left in the city manage to muster up the courage every so often to deploy raids in an attempt to serve justice. They stand no chance. Enter stage right; Brazil’s most highly trained paramilitary special operations police force, known as BOPE (which somehow stands for special police operations battalion).
In the weeks prior to the Pope’s visit, Captain Beto Nascimento and his Elite Squad are assigned to eliminate the underground drug dealers and secure the surrounding area for his Holiness. There’s just one problem. Captain Nascimento and his wife just welcomed their first child into the world, and he wants to be reassigned to a less dangerous division in BOPE. But first he must train and hand pick two of the top recruits to take his place. Capt. Nascimento has already got two perfect recruits in mind, both childhood friends. Matias is the level headed think before do’er, while Neto is the war obsessed maniac. Together though, they may be the perfect two replacements.
As the intensity of the training regiment the recruiting class faces grows, the stress of not having picked his replacement builds and builds on the shoulders of Capt. Nascimento and his new family. The climax of the story occurs at the perfect time when one of the recruits gets gun down in a slum. Now, Capt. Nascimento makes it his personal goal to find the men responsible while molding his heir in the perfect real-life training exercise. Capt. Nascimento and his Elite Squad enter the slums without mercy and make King Leonidas and his brave 300 look like Speedo wearing fairies from the fucking Stone Age. This Rio de Janeiro mother fucker and you haven’t seen evil until you’ve witnessed the corruptible and chaotic streets of Brazil. This squad of bulldogs on crack wants blood and revenge for their fallen comrade and they go door-to-door doing just that. They will bag you, gag you and if Capt. Nascimento doesn’t get an answer he likes, he will personally toe tag you. He will slap you in the face until you start weeping like a fucking baby and then call you, “a piece of shit faggot mother fucker!” Then he’ll plant two in you breast plate. Then spit on you. Next door…
Elite Squad or Tropa de Elite is one of the best action crime thrillers I’ve seen and is without a doubt one of the top foreign film that I’ve ever seen. It had me literally on the edge of my seat ready to jack up some little punk. A movie hasn’t made me want top that since, well…300 which I just got making fun of. But Elite Squad kicks the shit out of 300 in my mind. Needless to say, I was more than pleasantly surprised by this insanely intense action packed film. It’s a fucking MADE movie!
Rottentomatoes – 50%
IMDB – 8.1/ 10
Moviewiseguys – 9.5/ 10
