City of Men (Cidade dos Homens)

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A movie adaptation of a TV series, which is a spin off of another movie, is always going to be second-hand and Paulo Morelli can't help City Of Men feel like an expanded subplot Fernando Meirelles couldn't or wouldn't fit into his vastly superior City of God. We're back in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro where two friends - Ace (Silva) and Wallace (Cunha) - are on the cusp of their eighteenth birthday and their thoughts turn to their missing fathers. Wallace tracks down the man he thinks is his father, just out of jail after a fifteen-year stretch for murder, and a shaky relationship develops. All the while, a gang war rages in the background. Although similar in look (the bleached colours in evidence again), execution (hand held documentary approach) and storyline (a meandering plot encompassing the lives of a myriad of characters), City Of Men is City Of God's poor cousin; a Crystal Skull to Raiders of The Lost Ark, a Fluke to Underworld - all the elements are evident but sluggish and exhausted. However, Morelli does find time to expand on Meirelles' "Where Is God?" theme; Ace and Wallace's search for their fathers represent an absent deity, bringing to mind Fight Club's Tyler Durden: If our fathers were our models for God, and our fathers bailed, what does that tell us about God? Ace's relationship with his toddler son, meanwhile, is the only sweetener - there is hope and goodness even in a place like this. Cunha and Silva enjoy a solid screen presence and have the ability to make the viewer forget they're watching a film - a tough nut to crack, that. However, where Meirelles had the knack to allow the story and characters evolve in a natural progression, Morelli forces the issue: how Ace and Wallace are drawn into the street war gets a little Coronation Street.