In 1973, a young boy known as Carlinhos was kidnapped and never returned, one of the most intriguing mysteries of Brazilian social history. Plenty of speculation surfaced over the years, he was killed and never found, disappeared from view but still alive and other things. The mystery remains today. 1981 some crazy individuals decided to make based on all the evidence gathered then and the result was "O Sequestro" ("The Kidnapping"), a story more concerned in exploitation material focused on sloppy police investigation, procedures and sexual action than in telling the actual case or whatever was known at the time. The film tries to shy away from the real case but the poster itself clearly make us remind of Carlinhos case, the boys are very similar. Has to be one of the lowest films ever made but one that kept me going to see how far below quality they could get, despite an initial promising beginning. But the holes in the plot are far more damaging than the one that destroyed the Titanic.
I had to research a little more from what I knew about the actual case and I was surprised that despite the name changes and similar things, they reproduced factual events of the case. The kidnapping was quite similar with the robber demanding for the younger kid in the house, the investigation following potential suspects and events surrounding the ransom payment, and even the police torture on suspects (but the film is so clearly against the police actions that all we see is brutish and torture acts on witnesses, the family and suspects), which feels real since back in the 1970's we lived under a state of exception with the military regime and everything seemed allowed - but the cruel torture of the wife of a suspect is quite hard to watch.
Jorge Dória plays the chief of police in charge of the case (unrecognisable, and all I could think was that he looked former president Fernando Henrique), completely clueless to what's going on, making deductions that don't make sense due to the lousy police work on the case, the very last people to know about it since the news broke out in the media before it hit them. One of the investigators (an effective performance by Milton Moraes) seems really focused on the case but he has a way to make things uglier and worst than it is. Whatever, it all goes back to a ridiculous work by the police system of then, most focused on other things than to make a good investigation and follow the available leads.
If the law enforcement system that investigated Carlinhos case (in the movie he's called Zezinho) was prejudicial like the one from the movie, then it's no wonder why he hasn't found yet. They had a harmful focus on the first suspects they found, tortured them and got nothing with that. And of course, there's the whole charade about the kidnappers. Why they never showed up at their marked dates for getting the ransom? - the movie establishes that his father, a businessman, didn't have the money asked and was saved by a bank (not true). In cinema terms it was more troubling since the ransom note doesn't even mention a number to be called (the family didn't have a telephone anyway) neither a place for meeting yet the police always knew when to act and arrange money for a potential rescue. So many details that escaped the writers intention. Unbelievable. When the final credits rolled in, it comes a dedicatory to Serpico and honest law enforcement officers...so, the film's idea is to analyze how corrupt and tainted the police system were back in those years under the dictatorship with tortures, corruption and rush in judgment.
The thing that will make this thing a little unforgettable revolves around an exploitative pointless sex scene about a super macho cop and a transvestite. No point in the scene being in the film but the way the director composed the scene in a plot twist kind of way (jaw-dropping), it worked miraculously, just as much as the one long take scene interrogation of the boy's father, with its close-ups going back and forth between the father, the chief of police and two investigators, almost like a tennis match where your eyes and ears have to be real fast to gather the whole event.
"O Sequestro" pretends to reach a conclusion to what could possibly have happened with the kidnapped kid, only conjectures and crazy theories, but its main ambition is to show how inefficient and sloppy the police system worked then and now. I didn't trust this story for one minute. Those cops acting tough with witnesses and they expect full cooperation? Nah...Ridiculous. The main mindset with this film is that you can't wait for its ending. Since there's a review now, avoid it like the plague and you won't have to go through what I just did. It's laughable and pitiful on the exact same measure.
3/10.
