During this last year, I had the interesting experience of living in a house with two girls from Brazil. One of them had a fiancee still living there, and every week it seemed like she had some wild story about some close call that either she or her intended had experienced. She once told me that she wouldn't even think about going to the bakery two blocks from her house without getting into a car. It was just too dangerous to walk.
I've heard lots of stories from many different sources about the high rates of crime, especially kidnapping, in Brazil, but I never knew very much about it until I watched "Manda Bala," a fascinating and sharp documentary that looks at corruption and the criminal element in Brazil from many different angles.
"Manda Bala" starts out investigating a corrupt politician's failed program to help poor Brazilians in the north of the country, in a state called Para, which includes part of Brazil's Amazon region. It turns out that the politician, who has held every elected office in Brazil save that of the president, was using this employment program to embezzle money from the government. Director Jason Kohn examines some of the effects of the country's imbalance of wealth on the citizens of Para and also in Sao Paulo, a city famous for its' kidnappings. Kohn interviews victims, police officers and even a kidnapper and gives us a portrait that is creepy, troubling, and surprisingly neutral.
Two of the most interesting characters Kohn interviews are a plastic surgeon who does reconstructive surgery for kidnapping victims (the audience is treated to pretty visceral, but still really interesting footage of reconstructive ear surgery) and the kidnapper, who claims to have been born in a slum in Sao Paulo, and started stealing when he was nine.
The kidnapper, who also moonlights as a bank robber, seems to think of himself as some kind of Robin Hood character. The juxtaposition of a man who thinks very little about the many cops he kills and victims he maims while he still claims to have the best interests of his friends and family at heart was surprising and, oddly enough, a little heartwarming, too.
I do wish that Kohn had tied the political situation and the social issues of the film together more than he did. For most of the film, the corrupt politician's scandal and the stories of kidnappers and victims in Sao Paulo seem rather isolated, but Kohn manages to kind of tie the two together, although the connecting thread seems kind of weak. Otherwise, with its' nearly perfect cinematography, hip score (I want that soundtrack!) and enthralling subject matter, "Manda Bala" is 85 minutes well spent.