"Cidade Oculta" ("Hidden City") is a slighly obscure action/musical film whose main attraction lies on the city of São Paulo in the 1980's as a background rather than its superficial and poorly told
criminal story with uninteresting characters. Many known streets, hot spots (such as the Madame Satã club, at the peak of their fame) are amazingly well-shot, great street scenes at night and
one gets the chance to how great looking, colorful, interesting and amazing scenario it can be for movies, not losing one bit to any other major metropolis around the globe. But as said, the
story is cheap and succeeds only in being entertaining with its mixture of action film, small romance and some musical numbers (relax, it comes from the action inside the club, almost as if being
a humorless "Streets of Fire").
Musician Arrigo Barnabé plays an ex-convict who gets out of jail and searches for his partner in crime Japa (Celso Saiki) of whom he thinks
betrayed him on a business deal that went wrong and led him to jail. The mysterious Shirley Sombra (Carla Camurati) is part of Japa's group and she develops an interest in the young man
and you can guess what happens afterwards. And there's a corrupt chief of police (Cláudio Mamberti) trying to fight criminality in the city and that's where worlds collide with the
criminals following their dangerous plans and the cops hunting them down all over the dark corners of a giant and violent city.
As said, the background is what got my interest on this. It's dynamic, cultured, almost exotic. It's a whole new rhythm with its music from all kinds. But the story is quite cheap, with
countless cliches and overdone moments that one can easily forget everything that happens in it.
We have a hero with a zero charisma (Barnabé, who also wrote the movie, can't act), his best friends apparently traitor becomes the most interesting characters in this piece (Saiki has the vibes of a villain but he ends up being a cool
guy); Camuratti was beautiful as always but her powerful character isn't given much to work with; some couple of good action sequences here and there, with the highlight being the ending
which made this movie at least worth seeing for that. There are performances from underground groups of the period and for those who lived the era, it's a nostalgic trip to the past - some
numbers are quite good. Comedian Jô Soares cameo as a pawn shop owner is hilarious and it's a pity he never returns to the story, since a lot more could be done with such intelligent and
humored character.
Yet, even with plenty of downer moments, I liked the movie and I'd definitely watch it again. It's not totally wrong, the mixture of elements work and there's some nice acting involved.
The problem is in not showing a deeper story, with some higher importance besides the city. We never get the chance to truly understand characters motivations, why they are the way they are or
why they can't change themselves or anything. It's just mindless entertainment and with that in mind, if you see the film in this exact way, you won't be disappointed. 6/10.
