Viking Night: Elite Squad 2
By Bruce Hall
March 27, 2012
This, my friends, is Elite Squad 2. It asks hard questions and makes no compromises. It makes you think, and it also makes you want to get in your car and drive really fast until someone forces you to stop. It's visually striking. It's got mass. It's got energy. It's got a thumping hip hop soundtrack (some languages lend themselves better to rap than English; Portuguese is one of them). Seriously, this is the movie Michael Mann would make if Michael Mann were still MAKING Michael Mann movies. Simply put - Elite Squad 2 makes sweet love to all other cop movies, and then forces them to make sandwiches and wash dishes.
Yes, it has flaws. The level of grit will not be for everyone. There's less graphic violence in this movie than there SEEMS to be, but at times the film merely hints at horrors that are not shown on screen, and the image in your mind is more horrifying than what any visual effect could convey. Unless you can understand Portuguese, you're going to have to read a lot of subtitles. But, considering how many of us used to do our homework in front of the television, I've never bought into the intellectually lazy excuse that it's impossible to watch a movie and read subtitles simultaneously.
Nascimento and Fraga are not quite caricatures, but their uncompromising nature falls just short of a video game avatar. To some degree this is necessary, as I see both characters as being somewhat symbolic in nature. We all want criminals to pay - but do we really want to lose our humanity in the process of punishing them? Nascimento and Fraga represent opposing ends of this ideological spectrum, but they're both after the same thing - justice. There's always a middle ground, and at the end of the day that's what this movie is about - finding that ground.
While, of course, kicking you in the face with a steel toed combat boot.
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