When watching this movie, you will very quickly learn that Brazil is an incredibly messed up place. The cartels are violent, the police is incredibly corrupt, and human rights are routinely violated by the police. The worst part is that public opinion supports this police brutality, because the cartels are really that bad, and they go unpunished due to corruption. If the choice is brutal or corruption, the people of Brazil overwhelmingly choose brutality and human rights violations.
That's not to say that the human rights activists don't exist. They do exist, but they don't have much of a voice. It takes one to nearly be murdered by police for them to have any say, and all they accomplish is get one human rights violator to leave the force, and instead get promoted because of public backlash to the firing.
This is the state of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil; it's a brutal, corrupt mess. The corrupt justify themselves by saying that at least they're not violent, while the violent justify themselves by saying that at least they're not corrupt. And they all hate the human rights activists.
All of this is apparent with the character of our hero, Colonel Nascimento. He's the leader of BOPE, the Special Police Operations Battalion, and also the movie's narrator. He makes very clear what it is he believes in. And that's in brutal assaults against the cartel members. He has absolutely no respect for any of them, and if it were up to him he'd just shoot and kill everyone in the cartels, or better yet, let them kill themselves in a gang war.
The movie starts with our hero being called in alongside BOPE to deal with a prison break. One cartel in the prison managed to get a hold of guns, and is killing other inmates, members of a rival cartel. They take several officers hostage, and yet our hero orders BOPE to hold back until they finish off as many members of other cartels.
The order changes into holding back until their negotiator, a human rights activist and college professor married to Nascimento's ex-wife named Fraga, arrives by helicopter to attempt a peaceful solution. Even apart from the whole thing about marrying his ex-wife, Nascimento hates this guy's guts.
If it were my call, I'd just throw out the keys let [the cartel members] kill themselves. But left-wing intellectuals make a living out of scumbags.It comes as no surprise that Nascimento uses his attempt at negotiating as a diversion. As soon as the cartel lets their guard down, BOPE moves in and guns everyone down. After a tense standoff, the leader of the gang, holding Fraga at gunpoint, is shot dead just as he starts to surrender, spilling blood on Fraga's t-shirt, which quite literally says, "HUMAN RIGHTS" in English text. Naturally, the picture of blood splattered over a white HUMAN RIGHTS t-shirt causes a media frenzy which gets Nascimento fired.
Public opinion soon turns on the governor as the people as well as angry pundits with too many viewers support Nascimento's actions. An alternate solution is then put forward: Nascimento's second in command Matias, the one who almost shot Fraga, agrees to take the fall, and Nascimento is given a job as the undersecretary of Rio de Janeiro Public Safety for Intelligence. The role gives Nascimento even more power to make BOPE far stronger than before. He uses his authority to wiretap almost every favela in Rio, uncovering organized crime in multiple areas, and forwarding the intel to BOPE. BOPE in turn cleans up the streets, almost completely eliminating cartels it would seem.
Nascimento's whole reason for pushing BOPE forward is because he hates corrupt cops. His goal is to eliminate the sources of bribery corrupt cops rely on by eliminating the cartels. For the longest time, he believes that he's been highly successful. The reality is that he's only made the problem worse, a reality which doesn't hit him until much later.
Dirty cops, realizing exactly what's going on, decide to fill the power vacuum by establishing their own organized crime militia. They learn that because of all the BOPE drug busts, the drug trade is dying, but there's still money to be made in more creative means, such as pirated cable TV. Soon, these dirty cops are heading the largest extortion ring in Rio, and are protected by virtue of being part of the system and buying votes for elected officials with their actions. The elected officials then turn a blind eye to what the militia is doing, as the streets are safer under their control and the governor is getting the incredibly valuable slum voting block.
The heart of the movie is Nascimento finally discovering that the work he's been doing has only made the problem of police corruption worse. Once he makes this discovery, a process which involves an assassination attempt on his own life among many, many other things, Nascimento ends up joining forces with Fraga, who has since become a state legislator. Fraga uses his position to call for a congressional hearing, where Nascimento testifies to the incredible corruption.
What happens as a result is one of the largest sprees of witness executions in Brazilian history. And despite the number of witnesses murdered, the governor of the state is rightfully put behind bars as a criminal. The corruption and police-sponsored militia have received a massive blow.
Yet in spite of this the corruption soon returns, with the militia continuing its operations. Nascimento as narrator asks a simple question, "Who do you think pays for all this?" Silence follows, and then, "exactly." The system is corrupt to the core, to the highest levels of government. Rio gets the worst of it, and no matter what happens, the corruption persists. It reorganizes itself, but will never truly vanish. Nascimento's actions was a major blow, but ultimately only a temporary setback. Only through hundreds or thousands of those blows can a significant change be made, a daunting task which Nascimento is not going to back down from.
Elite Squad: The Enemy Within paints a very dark picture of the worst aspects of Brazil. Despite this, it ultimately paints a hopeful picture. It doesn't do anything stupid like provide a happy ending; instead the ending is barely an improvement over the status quo. Only in the context of how bad things could have gotten could the ending be considered happy. The biggest takeaway is that Nascimento is in a position of high power, is much more aware of how tricky and deeply rooted the corruption is, and has made a powerful and unlikely ally of Fraga.
In my opinion, Elite Squad: The Enemy Within is one of the best movies ever made. I can easily see why it is Brazil's highest grossing film, and an absolute sensation in the country. I would recommend it to all audiences, except for the fact that it is very, very violent. I would say parental supervision required for anyone under 16. That being said, I can't imagine anyone under 16 finding this movie that interesting. I highly recommend this movie for anyone interested in seeing a more realistic take on action films, because this one is much more plausible than the vast majority of American-made blockbusters.
