Jeremy_Urquhart

Cars are scary in real life, given how many accidents and deaths they cause, but you can't make cars scary in the horror genre. Stephen King gave it a shot with Christine and, to a lesser extent, From a Buick 8, and I'd say both of those are among his weaker efforts. The Car pre-dated either of those, though, and is indeed about a scary car with some sort of supernatural entity making it kill people, and that's it. I'm not expecting anything amazing out of a B-movie from the 1970s with that sort of premise, but I would've liked just a little more.

Still, I can't hate it. And I don't even hate Christine either, I just don't think it works as something frightening. They went for it with The Car, and maybe I kind of admire that dedication to something so silly, and for them largely playing it straight (or at least straighter than you'd expect). And there was one moment that surprised me, going into the final act, which energized the last half-hour or so a little more than what came before, so that's worth something, too.

I think I'd seen this twice before, but both times were nearly a decade and a half ago now. There wasn't any reason to wait so long to revisit this, because I always figured it was great as a teenager and would still be great as an adult, and yep, that's the case. It's great. It's older now, and I think it holds up well, so maybe in that sense, it's even better than it was in the early 2010s... but also, I don't think I realized how much it owed to some classic gangster movies back when I first watched it.

Must've realized it to some extent, because this really is "let's do Goodfellas, but it's in the slums of Rio and also the characters are a bit younger," and I think that's okay, since there are lots of things that are different, even if the style and structure are very similar. There are lots of American films where I wonder if they'd exist if not for influence from a non-English-language film, so I don't feel too bad about wondering the opposite in this case. I don't think City of God would exist in its current state without Goodfellas.

But it's not a copy, just heavily influenced. Also, I love Goodfellas, so if the biggest "problem" a movie has is being too similar to something so good, it's a minor problem. There were so many scenes I could remember and knew were coming watching this for the first time in 13 or 14 years, and I think that's always a good sign when so much of a movie sticks with you. This is excellently made, very powerful, and it's paced amazingly. It's not incredibly lengthy, at about 130 minutes, but it feels like it passes by in about 80 to 90 minutes. There remains a lot of hype around City of God 20+ years later, and I think it's deserved.