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Fraga is the sort of bleeding heart who believes criminals need hugs, not head shots. He shows up ready to hold hands with the prisoners and help them negotiate with police. Nascimento agrees, and BOPE shows up to negotiate - with hot lead. Mathias and his men kick down the doors, shoot everyone in the face, drop the mic and leave. Riot over. Humiliated, Fraga takes to the airwaves and accuses the police of murder. This is the opportunity the Government needs to get rid of Nascimento, but they can't fire him. The crime weary public is 100 percent okay with a couple dozen drug lords getting ventilated; they consider BOPE heroes. So, the Governor kicks Nascimento upstairs, making him head of intelligence. A cushy desk job and a nice bump in pay should take the fight out of anyone, right?

Not so much.

Using his new found power, Nascimento gives BOPE more money, more equipment and more power. I think he even gives them steroids and raw meat. They sweep through Rio like a steaming wave of hot murder, bringing the drug syndicate to its knees. Problem is, with the crime lords no longer running the city, dirty cops move in to take over. And some of them turn out to be old friends. Things are worse than ever, and Nascimento finds himself having to fight the same battle all over again - except this time the enemy is...wait for it...WITHIN.

Oh, and did I mention that Fraga is shacked up with Nascimento's ex wife and teenage son? His leftist rants have left them both afraid of the man they once called husband and father; both are now pawns in a political tug of war between two enemies who seek the same goal through opposing methods. Alliances are made, and then broken. Friends become enemies, and enemies become friends. Lines begin to blur between what's political and what's practical. And, how do you solve a problem when everyone who has the power to solve it benefits from leaving things the way they are?

Without a doubt, Elite Squad 2 is full of enough twists, turns and narrative intrigue for two or three films. On top of that, it offers up generous helpings of car chases, gunplay, Brazilian girls in bikinis, torture, screaming matches, blood, sweat and tears. But none of it feels forced, contrived or gratuitous. There's plenty of shocking violence but Padilha's direction is so restrained that it never feels out of context. Brazilian drug lords are not nice people. They roll hard and to destroy them, the police are gonna have to jack some people up.

Like it or not this is a dirty business, conducted in the dirty kind of world that tends to soil everything and everyone in it. Money and power are strong motivators, and not everyone is made of the same moral fiber. One man will gladly risk his life for an ideal, while another will happily strike a deal with evil to maintain the status quo. Welcome to Brazil.

Now, certain earmarks of Brazilian culture may at first seem inaccessible to American audiences - do we have entire cities run by drug cartels and dirty cops? I guess that depends on where you live, and whom you ask. But the appropriate ratio of liberty versus security is a question that every democracy grapples with, sooner or later. When the very fabric of your society is threatened, how far are we willing to take the fight? When the enemy takes it to the ground, are we willing to go there? When everyone's covered in shit, it's hard to tell one side from the other and in a free society, everyone's got an opinion on that. Throw in the 24 hour news cycle and its screaming cadre of talking heads and know-it-alls, and you've got yourself one hell of a story.

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