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IMDbPro

Elite Squad

Original title: Tropa de Elite
  • 20072007
  • RR
  • 1h 55m
IMDb RATING
8.0/10
105K
YOUR RATING
Wagner Moura in Elite Squad (2007)
This is the theatrical trailer for Elite Squad (aka Tropa de Elite), directed by José Padilha.
Play trailer1:24
1 Video
43 Photos
ActionCrimeDrama
In 1997 Rio de Janeiro, Captain Nascimento has to find a substitute for his position while trying to take down drug dealers and criminals before the Pope visits.In 1997 Rio de Janeiro, Captain Nascimento has to find a substitute for his position while trying to take down drug dealers and criminals before the Pope visits.In 1997 Rio de Janeiro, Captain Nascimento has to find a substitute for his position while trying to take down drug dealers and criminals before the Pope visits.
IMDb RATING
8.0/10
105K
YOUR RATING
    • José Padilha
  • Writers
    • José Padilha(original screenplay)
    • Rodrigo Pimentel(original screenplay)
    • Bráulio Mantovani(original screenplay)
  • Stars
    • Wagner Moura
    • André Ramiro
    • Caio Junqueira
    • José Padilha
  • Writers
    • José Padilha(original screenplay)
    • Rodrigo Pimentel(original screenplay)
    • Bráulio Mantovani(original screenplay)
  • Stars
    • Wagner Moura
    • André Ramiro
    • Caio Junqueira
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 141User reviews
    • 147Critic reviews
    • 33Metascore
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Awards

    Videos1

    Elite Squad (aka Tropa de Elite): Trailer
    Trailer 1:24
    Watch Elite Squad (aka Tropa de Elite): Trailer

    Photos43

    Wagner Moura in Elite Squad (2007)
    Wagner Moura in Elite Squad (2007)
    Wagner Moura in Elite Squad (2007)
    Caio Junqueira and André Ramiro in Elite Squad (2007)
    Elite Squad (2007)
    Wagner Moura in Elite Squad (2007)
    Elite Squad (2007)
    Wagner Moura in Elite Squad (2007)
    Wagner Moura in Elite Squad (2007)
    Wagner Moura and Fábio Lago in Elite Squad (2007)
    Fernanda Machado and André Ramiro in Elite Squad (2007)
    Fernanda Machado in Elite Squad (2007)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Wagner Moura
    Wagner Moura
    • Capitão Nascimento
    André Ramiro
    André Ramiro
    • André Matias
    Caio Junqueira
    Caio Junqueira
    • Neto
    Milhem Cortaz
    Milhem Cortaz
    • Capitão Fábio
    Fernanda Machado
    Fernanda Machado
    • Maria
    Maria Ribeiro
    • Rosane
    Paulo Vilela
    • Edu
    Fernanda de Freitas
    Fernanda de Freitas
    • Roberta
    André Di Mauro
    • Rodrigues
    • (as André Mauro)
    Fábio Lago
    Fábio Lago
    • Claudio Mendes de Lima 'Baiano'
    Erick Oliveira
    • Marcinho
    • (as Erick Maximiano Oliveira)
    Patrick Santos
    • Tinho
    Rafael d'Avila
    • Xuxa
    Roberta Santiago
    • Rose, Namorada do Xuva
    Emerson Gomes
    • Xaveco
    Bernardo Jablonski
    • Prof. Gusmão
    Allan Guilherme
    • Romerito
    Marcelo Escorel
    Marcelo Escorel
    • Participação Esepcial Como Coronel Otávio
      • José Padilha
    • Writers
      • José Padilha(original screenplay)
      • Rodrigo Pimentel(original screenplay) (book "Elite da Tropa")
      • Bráulio Mantovani(original screenplay)
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      The movie was originally meant to have Capitão Nascimento as a secondary character and Neto and Matias as the main characters. It was only after shooting was finished that director José Padilha and writer Bráulio Mantovani realized how impressed they were with Wagner Moura's charisma on screen and decided to edit the film with his voice over, changing the focus of the story and turning Capitão Nascimento into a main character.
    • Quotes

      Trainee officer: [during an information training session] Hey, Coordinator!

      Capitão Nascimento: Yes, my sir?

      Trainee officer: Soldier 05 is sleeping.

      Capitão Nascimento: Hey Soldier 05!

      [hands 05 a grenade, 05 takes the grendade]

      André Matias: Yes, sir?

      Capitão Nascimento: Please take this.

      [removes the pin]

      Capitão Nascimento: Hey 05, if you drop this granade you will make the whole place explode. You will blow up ALL of your colleagues, you will blow up all of my auxiliaries, and YOU will make myself explode. Will the sir fall asleep again?

      André Matias: No sir!

      Capitão Nascimento: [after 05 stares down the grenade] We are all trusting you, sir.

    • Connections
      Featured in Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within (2010)
    • Soundtracks
      Tropa de Elite
      Performed by Tihuana

    User reviews141

    Review
    Review
    Featured review
    7/10
    A hell of a story...but not the whole story
    "Tropa de Elite" isn't merely one more Brazilian film on urban violence; it's a cathartic socio-cultural phenomenon of almost unprecedented proportions in Brazil, the omnipresent theme on TV talk shows, newspapers articles, bars and dinner tables. Prior to its theatrical release this October, "Tropa" was seen by an estimated record 11 million people who bought pirate DVD copies or illegally downloaded it on the net (the biggest Brazilian box-office success in the last 25 years was "2 Filhos de Francisco" with 5,5 million tickets sold).

    The reaction is passionately polarized: some call it the best Brazilian movie since "City of God" -- a definite influence here, in the cinematography, editing and screenplay structure, with an omniscient narrator and use of mixed chronology -- exposing the endemic corruption of Rio de Janeiro's police force and the "unorthodox" methods used by BOPE (the self-called "incorruptible" elite squad of Rio's military police force, created in 1978 and inspired by the U.S. SWAT) that include torture and shoot-first-ask-later modus operandi in the ultra-violent, ever-growing drug war in Rio's favelas. Others have publicly attacked it as fascist in its glorification of BOPE, its sadistic depiction of torture and the reductionist, simple-minded vision of the complex issues involving violence/ drugs/police corruption in Rio.

    Director José Padilha and co-writer Rodrigo Pimentel (a former BOPE captain who left the squad for disagreeing with its praxis) had collaborated in the extraordinary "Bus 174", a multi-faceted documentary on Rio's violence. In "Tropa", they controversially chose to give us a deliberately biased vision of the problem: from the start we're stuck with one man, the overstressed, rebellious, self-righteous Capt Nascimento (Wagner Moura) in his journey into becoming a psychopathic sadist and hot-blooded killer, who believes drug traffic is caused by the druggie middle-class bourgeoisie (as if the poor didn't do drugs!) and claims the solution is to kill all traffickers. To Nascimento, corruption is abominable; torture isn't.

    Nascimento is the film's absolute protagonist, narrator, commentator and "truth-puker". In his mind, all non-elite policemen are corrupt and incompetent, all charity NGOs in the favelas are cover-up fraudulent enterprises, all college students are useless double-faced potheads, and legal procedures are an inefficient waste of time. He's nearer to the traffickers' violent, revenge-based, lawless ethics than he's ever able to realize.

    "There's nothing wrong with shooting people if you shoot the right people", used to say Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry back in the 1970s, and it could well be Capt. Nascimento's motto. He's a vigilante in uniform, in the tradition of the executioners played by Eastwood, Bronson, Stallone and 24 Hours' Jack Bauer; he's the heir to the 1970s' Brazilian military regime know-how on torture. Yet, the film tries hard at "humanizing" Nascimento: his wife's pregnant, his marriage falters, he's moved to tears by the suffering of a mother who lost her son in the traffic war, he's in medication for his panic attacks. AND he's trying to save the POPE's life, no less!

    All the other characters are just rough sketches or caricatures. The one character who might be the classical "narrator/observer" (like Buscapé/Rocket in "City of God") is the idealist, Foucault-reading aspiring police officer Mathias (though it's hard to believe an aspiring officer could afford to attend Rio's most expensive law school). But Mathias, too, is finally co-opted by the brainwashing "Full-Metal-Jacket"-like BOPE training that changes him into an amoral beast fueled with rage.

    Padilha says he wanted to portray Nascimento as a monster, and that audiences who are hailing Nascimento as a "hero" and BOPE as a "model" institution have caught him by surprise -- oh, really? Padilha is probably being sarcastic, naive or silly: everybody knows movie vigilante cops have been consistently idolized the world over (and co- writer Pimentel has publicly disagreed, stating the "Tropa" is clearly pro-BOPE). The graphic, sadistic scenes of torture -- supposedly meant to inspire disgust -- make the delight of a large vigilante-minded part of the audience. And Wagner Moura's extraordinary, scary performance as Nascimento is unsettling: we can't dismiss him as a stupid fascist the way we dismissed inarticulate stiffs like Bronson, Seagal or Stallone. The fact is that there's now a BOPE cult-following, with BOPE's logo (a skull pierced by pistols and knives) reproduced on t-shirts and underwear, BOPE officers being cheered in the streets in their armored "glory", and young kids (from all social classes) mimicking the film's "bag-in-the-head torture" as a new bullying style.

    Militarists and pacifists will hardly change sides after the watching the film; militarists will have multiple orgasms and pacifists will cringe in horror. The filmmakers aren't interested in seriously discussing the drug issue (legalization is not even mentioned as an option). Nor in exposing Rio's drug traffic's multi-fingered interconnections, the zillion-dollar, highly organized international business involving farmers, money-washing executives, chemistry labs, gun-runners, bankers, politicians, accountants, lawyers, transport systems, etc. Nor in showing the real victims: the majority of the favela inhabitants, who aren't involved in the drug business but have to live under its rules, mere "extras" whose fate (in movies and in real life) is to be used, humiliated, segregated or, worse, wounded/killed by random bullets from BOTH policemen and traffickers.

    "Tropa" is a must-see film, but it's misleading and entrapping: by opting for an "open", "what would YOU do?" ending (probably influenced by the breathtaking finale of "Paradise Now"), the filmmakers demands us to take sides about a very, VERY complex issue they've shown us only ONE angle of. "Tropa" is cinematically dazzling, but so physically and ideologically nauseating you'll need an antidote -- be sure to also watch the faceted, influential documentary "Notícias de uma Guerra Particular" and be aware of many other angles to a terrible reality that plagues not only Rio, but most of Third World's chaotic, no-man's-land, way out-of- control big cities.
    helpful•173
    72
    • debblyst
    • Oct 21, 2007

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • October 12, 2007 (Brazil)
      • Brazil
      • United States
      • Argentina
      • Official site (Brazil)
      • TFM Distribution (France)
      • Portuguese
      • Greek
      • Latin
      • French
      • English
      • German
      • Italian
      • Spanish
    • Also known as
      • Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
    • Production companies
      • Zazen Produções
      • Posto 9
      • Feijão Filmes
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

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    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

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    • 1 hour 55 minutes
      • Color
      • Dolby Digital

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