Brazilian Western

Released by: Shout! Factory
Released on: November 18, 2014
Director: René Sampaio
Cast: Fabricio Boliveira, Isis Valverde, Felipe Abib, Antonio Calloni, Marcos Paulo, Cinara Leal, Cesar Trancoso
Year: 2013
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The Movie:

As a boy in the 1970s, Joí£o do Santo Cristo watched as his father was murdered by a police officer near his hometown of Salvador, Bahia, along the northeast coast of Brazil. A couple of years later, he avenged his father's death and was sentenced to prison. Released in the 1980s, he finds that life outside his cell is much different than when he went in. Dictatorial rule is coming to an end, and drug lords are rampant. Black, poor, and illiterate, he has nowhere to turn. He seeks out his only living relative, his cousin Pablo in Brasilia, and is inducted into a criminal gang. One night while trying to escape a rival gang, he takes refuge in the apartment of a white senator, where he meets Maria Lucia. She shields him from the gang's members and inadvertently turns his world upside down. The two fall in love, but his rival for her affection, a fellow drug dealer named Jeremias, wants Joí£o out of the way. To that end, he and his acolytes abduct, beat, and rape Joí£o, but they leave him alive, leading to an all-out war between the two gangs. In an effort to save Joí£o, Maria makes a pact with Jeremias, a mistake that everyone will live to regret.

Inspired by rocker Renato Russo's classic song of the same name, Brazilian Western (original title: Faroeste Caboclo) is an interesting film, a not-quite-contemporary crime drama with the pretensions of a spaghetti western—and it works! Equal parts gritty drug thriller and slick, heartfelt romance, it operates as something of an ode to '90s filmmaking, a low-budget Tarantino flick sans the wicked humor. Joí£o is the equivalent of the classic western figure, a jaded anti-hero wrongfully victimized by a corrupt system aimed at holding its struggling citizens in check. He's surrounded by cold-blooded murderers, but the words of his father, who advised him against thievery and crookedness, echo in his mind. When Maria tells him that she can't share her life with a "hood" because she's looking for something more, he sees his chance to escape the lifestyle to which his poverty has doomed him. The problem is, once a part of that lifestyle, it never lets go, and Joí£o is pulled back into it by a shocking act of violence.

While the film's elements may seem disparate in description, director René Sampaio puts them together seamlessly. He weaves a web so intricate and varied, yet so smoothly stitched, that each part becomes unidentifiable in the greater amalgam. Sampaio departs from Tarantino and his American ilk by letting the actors take center stage, not the camera or the dialogue. The camera becomes an invisible extension of the story, never calling attention to itself, and the dialogue is only there to move the actors from scene to scene. It's a smart move, placing Brazilian Western several notches above so many films of a similar nature.

The film's performances work. There isn't a single one that feels less than natural, and the three leads (Fabricio Boliveira as Joí£o, Isis Valverde as Maria, and Felipe Abib as Jeremias) acquit themselves well. Boliveira has the kind of depressive, clueless, loyal charm needed to bring Joí£o to life, while Valverde deftly plays Maria as a world-weary daughter fearful of betraying her father's traditional values system, one that would never tolerate her marriage to a black man, let alone an illiterate one without means to support himself. And an intense Abib presents Jeremias as a frightening psychopath propped up by his rich, drug-dealing father. It would come as no surprise if any or all of these actors made the jaunt from South America to Hollywood.

The song on which Brazilian Western is based was first released as part of the album Que País í‰ Este, from Russo's band Legií£o Urbana (English name: Urban Legion), in 1987. Various parties expressed interest in adapting it to the big screen, but it wasn't until 2005 that a production was announced with director Sampaio at the helm. A company claiming copyright sued to be included in the negotiations, but the nation's Supreme Court disagreed. Despite the court's decision, filming didn't get started until 2011, thanks to the filmmakers' difficulty in raising adequate funds to cover the production's expenditures. Even after funding was raised, it was an on-again/off-again affair that wasn't completed until early 2013. The finished film was released in its native Brazil in May of that year to rave reviews and strong box office receipts.

Video/Audio/Extras:

Brazilian Western comes to the United States via Shout! Factory, who has released the film on Blu-ray in an MPEG-4 AVC encode. Presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1, the 1080p resolution is nothing short of astounding. Detail is vivid, whether in close-ups or distant shots, from people's faces to the desert shrub of the Brazilian countryside. Every leaf of every tree, every blade of grass on the ground, and every crease in each thespian's face is captured by the camera. Black levels have been pushed so that people's heads often appear to swim in a sea of darkness during nighttime sequences, but this only adds to the film's gritty nature. While some viewers will have a problem with the black crush, this seems intentional and should not cause alarm. Following the lead of many similar American films, colors are altered, creating an amber glow in spots.

The BD offers two sound options: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0, both of which are in the film's original Portuguese language. There are default English subtitles, but these can be turned off if the viewer so wishes. The 5.1 track is nicely directional, with gunshots popping out of the various speakers most closely situated to the side of the frame in which the shooter stands. The mix is strong, and effects, background noise, or the score is never allowed to interfere with the dialogue. As for the film's terrific soundtrack, much of it is made up of catchy pop songs (including the Dylanesque title song and Billy Idol's “Dancing with Myself”), which are served well by the track. The alternate 2.0 track is considerably less distinctive, but it does a decent enough job for those without a surround system.

Shout! offers fans of the film a couple of extras, including a teaser trailer running a little over two minutes in length and a theatrical trailer running a little less than two minutes. Given the nature of each trailer, the teaser feels like the full trailer and the full trailer feels like a teaser. There's also a making of documentary that runs a little under half an hour. Interviews include director Sampaio, executive producers Marcello Ludwig Maia and Bianca de Felippes, and actors Boliveira, Valverde, Abib, Antonio Calloni and Cesar Trancoso, among others. They discuss everything from the writing of the script to the motivations of the characters. There are also some terrific shots of the crew at work behind the scenes.

A DVD containing the film and all the same extras is also included. It, too, looks and sounds very good.

The Final Word:

Brazilian Western is simultaneously slick and gritty. The script successfully melds genres in a way that's almost imperceptible, and the director overcomes any handicap that might be associated with such a move by crafting a compelling, well-paced crime thriller fueled by a solid romantic subplot. Performances are good all around, and period detail is convincing. Shout!'s Blu-ray release of the film looks superlative in hi-def. Detail is particularly vivid and blacks are really black. The 5.1 sound is terrific. Viewers interested in a good foreign film or a nice, unobtrusive, romantic thriller will want to check the film out.

Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps