The movie City of God pictures a slum called City of God in Brazil that is continuously affected by gangs that are in control of drugs and guns. At the beginning of the movie three of the people this gang seem to have good control of the slum. They loot and rob local businesses and share some of it with the members of the city in return of protection. One time they decide to rob a motel and tell one of the younger members Li’l Dice to serve as the lookout for the police. Instead what he does is that he shots everyone in the motel. This takes the police’s attention a lot and that’s when things start to get worse in the city of god. People tell the police that no one knows anything and a lot of innocent people become arrested and killed because of this incident.

Throughout the movie there are many instances in which children and very young people get involved with drugs and guns. At some point in the movie the neighborhood seems to have relative peace with the existence of one gang. It looks like both the nature of drugs and the presence of the police are making this whole community fall apart. One of the points that our GRF asked us to think about was that if it was better for that whole community to be under the control of one gang or for the police to try get control over the whole neighborhood. This question’s a hard one for me to answer. At first place, I would probably say for the police to take over. However, the police in this movie were so corrupt that they were making the matter much worse. Overall, I don’t think in long term for the gang to take control over the area would result in peace cause the gang was kind of destroying itself from inside.

The reason I thought this whole community was falling apart was because fear and the distrust between the people and the government. The fact that everyone is trying to hide everything they know because of the fear of a corrupt government was both making it worse for the people and the government. Closer to the end of the movie, the brother of one of the old gang Rocket members gets an internship with the newspaper because he takes a picture of the head of the gang Li’l Dice in the City of God where no one even dares to go. Rocket after getting the internship even secretly takes pictures of the police stealing Li’l Dice’s money and letting him go and Li’l Dice being killed. He eventually decides not to publish the picture of the police. Even when Rocket’s in a position that can reveal information decides not to; this is the whole reason everyone is suffering no one knows anything and everything has to remain a secret.