'CITY' A BRACING IMMERSION INTO RIO'S MEAN STREETS.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

CONTROVERSIAL but hugely popular in its native Brazil and acclaimed just about everywhere else that it's appeared, ``City of God'' is the latest in a distinguished line of cinematic communiques (``Pixote'' was a memorable one) from the desperate downside of Rio de Janeiro.

Directed by a successful commercial-maker, Fernando Meirelles (with class-crossing help from Katia Lund, who had experience in the brutal favela slums where privileged Meirelles wanted to shoot), and adapted from Paulo Lins' lengthy novel ``Cidade de Deus,'' the film charts the development - or more accurately, the devolution - of a hopeless neighborhood built for the poor from the 1960s through the 1980s.

With mostly amateur actors from just such an area, a bag of slick camera tricks and as detailed, objective and yet simultaneously empathetic a viewpoint as he can muster, Meirelles immerses us in a society going from very bad to much worse in a coffin-shaped handbasket. Astutely, he also chose to present the metastasizing narrative from, for the most part, the perspectives of children who grew up in the title favela - or at least the ones who made it to adulthood, and tended to take over the place by killing the ones who didn't.

Although a rich tapestry of incisively drawn characters emerges, two personalities eventually dominate the story. One, appropriately enough, is Li'l Ze (Leandro Firmino da Hora), a ruthless and unloved drug gang honcho whom we meet when, as a child (played by Douglas Silva), he cold-bloodedly wipes out a brothel full of captives.

A far different kind of shooter who started out young, the timid Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues) grows up in Ze's shadow and tries to keep out of his playmate's gun sights, while himself becoming a talented photographer. How they will affect one another's lives, while the endemic poverty and violence of their environment exerts greater influence on them and all whom they know, manifests in appalling, ironic and - it must be said - occasionally euphoric ways, as the driving desire for joy among ``God's'' denizens sometimes, against the odds, pays off.

How much Meirelles is exploiting these poor folks' situation and to what extent he wants to humanize members of society who are usually just despised or dismissed is worth debating, although the film seems to lean toward the latter, more open-hearted attitude.

Other questions. Does ``City of God'' deliver the rich character understanding that such masterpieces of the subgenre as Luis Bunuel's ``Los Olvidados'' did? No. Do the sometimes delirious visuals, time jumps and flashy editing make this an MTV look at civic implosion? Not really, but they do contribute a sense of intoxication while making it all seem very urgent and contemporary.

None of these answers is anymore conclusive than the questions that raised them. But what it all adds up to is a life study of an urban landscape, from its illegitimate birth through traumatic maturity, and on into a not-quite death that, for the generations who call City of God home, is a perpetually self-fulfilling cycle.

CITY OF GOD - Three and one half stars

(R: violence, drug use, sex, language)

Starring: Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino da Hora, Matheus Nachtergaele, Seu Jorge.

Director: Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund.

Running time: 2 hr. 10 min.

Playing: The Grove, Farmer's Market; Monica, Santa Monica.

In a nutshell: Kaleidoscopic look at the takeover of an impoverished, Rio de Janeiro favela by drug gangs is relentlessly brutal, but not devoid of hope.

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Alexandre Rodrigues plays Rocket, an aspiring photographer from a drug-infested Rio de Janeiro slum, in ``City of God.''