Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Cody One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

sllgrecco Sorry Russ Karlberg, but you didn't get anything.The history and the way it was shoot is intensional, to represent a very bad time in Brazilian history, the years between 1980-1994. Inflation, government holding peoples money in bank, etc. The director Walter Salles said he shooted in black and white to show that bad times.Maybe only Brazilians full understand the meaning of this movie, maybe the history is indeed complicated to the people that do not lived here in that time.And for Ien Colby, who asked "Also how did they get through the gate, where were the cops?": man, why do you think they went to that very little town? Just for that, so the frontier isn't very guarded. Go there and see for yourself, it's really like that.I really enjoyed this movie and recommended it, a fine movie like all Walter Salles movies, specially for Brazilians.

battisti the film's got very stylish, if not utterly original, camera-work throughout (that's what makes it a better-than-average movie) - and you don't mind the images' being grainy at all. the finest scene, to my mind, in this respect, was when the main characters are shot through the windshield covered by patches of rain pouring down on it. but, sadly, the characters are rather shallow, consequently hard to sympathize with, and the story isn't very convincing either - it's only mildly complicated and it does not offer more than a run-of-the-mill crime drama. it is also too redundant at some places - things it already communicated subtly and implicitly get said out in a rather direct way by some of the characters or through some superfluous scene. watch it once, though, it's not bad at all.

William J. Fickling This existential thriller, in Portuguese with English subtitles, is a modern version of the American filmes noires of the 40s, complete with a surprise twist at the end. It is riveting from beginning to end. My only criticism is its poor production values. The film looks cheaply made, and it probably was, so the black and white cinematography is vastly inferior to that of Godard in Vivre Sa Vie, to cite another film noir of more than 30 years earlier. Most maddening of all, the subtitles are often hard to read. When will filmmakers learn and provide yellow subtitles so that they can be read against a white background. I'd give this an 8 overall, although with better production values it could have been higher.

Lenbrazl Fado is a sad almost bluesy style of Portuguese Gypsy music that is heard repeatedly trough the movie. As explained by one of the main characters (Igor) it also means fate.Indeed it's fate that bring the two main characters Paco and Alex together and triggers the problems that ensue.On the whole I enjoyed it quite a bit. It starts out as an 'on the down and outs' drama/road movie an builds into a suspenseful thriller / road movie.There were two things that I found unrealistic that kept me from giving it a higher rating (I gave it an 8). The first is the major point of why did Alex give the stuff away. She was so desperate for cash that she sold her passport for a paltry sum and then she gives away things worth thousands to a stranger? Her explanation was unconvincing. Also how did they get through the gate, where were the cops?