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City Of God Essay

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“City of God” is based off of a true story about two friends - Rocket and Lil Ze - who grew up together, but took completely different paths. One, Rocket, becomes a photographer; the other - Ze - becomes a drug dealer. The movie takes us viewers on a journey where we learn about the individual paths they took, the violence surrounding it, and the often short lives of those wrapped up in the slums of Rio de Janeiro’s heavily influenced dangerous world of drugs and crime. At first glance, one might think this movie was made to show how living in poverty and segregation can lead to frustrated people becoming criminals. Instead, we see how in unsupervised chaos - led by the government building slums in the 1960’s to move poor and mostly black people…show more content…
Rocket tried his hardest to keep away from the norm of the slums but eventually succumbs to it before quickly learning it is not the life for him. When he is told who his victims are, he can not go through with it because he ends up liking them which prevented him from robbing them. Lil Ze is another story. He loves the thrill he gets when firing a gun, quickly getting wrapped up into the life of drugs and gangs where he thrives. As the story progresses, Rocket and Ze experience different challenges and deal with them in very different ways. Rocket looks beyond the slums for a good life where he makes money, a career, and is safe from the everyday struggles of the slum. Lil Ze seems to be unaware of a world outside of the slum. He is more interested in becoming the most powerful and respected man within the slum where success is measured with guns, drugs, and how much other people fear/respect you. I would recommend “City of God” because it was very eye-opening. The film shows that there is a lot more to Rio de Janeiro than beaches and resorts. Hidden away from the public is a different, much darker place riddled with crime and chaos. It also shows that Latin America still has a big crime problem that needs to be addressed
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