ELITE SQUAD

I don't see why this film gained so much notoriety.  It was boring.  Jose Padilha sure made a name for himself off the movie.  However, if he makes his U.S. studio films like ELITE SQUAD, he'll be bounced out quickly.

The whole training sequence could've been cut out.  The villain was weak.  In an action film, when would you have the villain run away and hide?  How does he drive the plot this way? 

The point of the story though is how police battling corruption will turn corrupt themselves.  That's a great theme.  There's a good movie in here somewhere.  It just has to become edgier and more violent.  You're exploring the slums and you've set them up to be a warzone.  Yet, Padilha backs off on showing us that.  We need to see danger on the streets.  We need that danger to be in our face.  It's got to be constantly lurking to give the film an edge.

Instead, it's set up and then dropped as the majority of the film examines the police corruption inside the department.  This departmental corruption is a subplot.  The meat of the story is this elite squad and how it'll become corrupt.  Yet, our hero doesn't  become a member of the squad until the last third of the film. 

Film could've been a classic.