Fernando Meirelles did his job. After making a movie about two Popes, he got us a great South American Pope and North American Southside Chicago Pope. Job complete, he worked his way back to his home country Brazil to make…a post apocalyptic nightmare tale? Maybe when you’re in a place that holy, you need to veer HARD in the opposite direction for some perspective on how the real world is living.
A catastrophe has wiped out the oceans and left Rio De Janeiro to fend for itself. The only salve for the hungry populous is the beast race, a diabolical reality TV show where masked poor people try to become champions and earn their way out of poverty…while risking someone they love as an “offering” to the rich. The new entry this season is cat, or Mano (Matheus Abreu), a defector from a rebelling part of Rio to try to get him and his sister Dalva (Thainá Duarte) to financial independence, and Nadine (Isis Valverde), a first time eye in the sky for the runner. Initially Manu tries to keep Dalva out of this, but showrunners Abu (Rodrigo Santoro) and Divina (Anitta) see the “entertainment” value of a brother risking his sister, forcing her to be the offering.
Beast Race is two different movies, a good one and a bad one. The bad one first is when the movie’s not racing. Brazilian post apocalyptic thrillers aren’t exactly a giant movie genre, so the trio of directors (Fernando Meirelles, Ernesto Solis, and Rodrigo Pesavento) have carte blanche to make whatever rules they want for their world. Sometimes that’s a blessing, but in Beast Race’s case it’s a curse. The story goes for a haves and have nots tale, but maybe 3 cooks in the kitchen translated to the same on the screen. The movie tries to chew off too much for a brisk thriller, trying to build stories for rebels, defectors, multiple runners, surveillance support runner partners, game managers, runner family members. Eventually the branches of the tree become way too long and gangly. The movie doesn’t quite know what to focus on when the Corrida dos Bichos is between phases, resulting in undeveloped archetypes and a movie that feels panically chopped together to get to the next race.
Or maybe that’s just because the races kick ass! The Beast Race itself is an unholy mixture of Death Race 2000 and The Maze Runner. Using an epic dry Rio backdrop, we have masked contestant running and flying across favelas, skyscrapers, stockyards, beachfronts, and forest. As crappy as the editing is outside the beast race, it’s electric during it. We cut frantically between runners on the ground and eye in the sky support. On the ground is some of that Meirelles magic, feeling like a propulsive music video of parkour and some fighting jacking out adrenaline into overdrive, hyperaware bout a bit lost. Then we cut to the support, calming us down, and giving perspective on where the runners are relative to one another, helping their runners like the pilots in The Matrix. The terrain differences mean each race leg feels different, giving the directors a chance to have fun showing off Rio’s post-apocalyptic deadly delights. The masks are a final unsettling icing on the cake that also makes it clear who’s who for a world audience unfamiliar with the stars (other than Xerxes himself, Rodrigo Santoro, and Isis Valverde, who definitely should NEVER be in a mask).
As long as the races stay good, we could make a couple more Corrida dos Bichos movies. Bring in a new runner with a new story, and deepen the lore a little more. Let’s also just full send Rodrigo Santoro into Xerxes again? So that way, we can get Gerard Butler in the third movie as a rival showrunner…of Greek descent. De nada, everyone. De nada.