Bárbara Colen

Thomás Aquino

Silvero Pereira

Sônia Braga

Udo Kier

Thardelly Lima

Rubens Santos

Wilson Rabelo

Carlos Francisco

Luciana Souza

Karine Teles

Antonio Saboia

Lia de Itamaracá

Buda Lira

Clébia Sousa

Danny Barbosa

Edilson Silva

Eduarda Samara

Fabíola Líper

Ingrid Trigueiro

Jamila Facury

Jr. Black

Márcio Fecher

Rodger Rogério

Suzy Lopes

Uirá dos Reis

Val Junior

Valmir do Côco

Zoraide Coleto

Jonny Mars

Alli Willow

James Turpin

Julia Marie Peterson

Brian Townes

Charles Hodges

Chris Doubek

Luiz Osmani

Juliano Dornelles

Kleber Mendonça Filho

Emilie Lesclaux

Maria Barbalho

Rita Azevedo

Nicolas Hallet

Ricardo Cutz

Cyril Holtz

Carlos Diegues

Kevin Chneiweiss

Dora Amorim

Tiago Melo

Cristina Alves

Dedete Parente Costa

Daniel Lentini

Leonardo Lacca

Marcelo Caetano

Débora Oliveira

Luciano Campelo

Ian Abé

Thales Junqueira

Nicolau Saldanha

Fellipe Fernandes

Saïd Ben Saïd

Michel Merkt

Kateryna Merkt

Eduardo Serrano

Tayce Vale

Matheus Miguens

Victor Quintanilha

Olivier Père

Mima Mizukami

Mateus Alves

Tomaz Alves de Souza

Pedro Sotero

Mystery

Western

Thriller

Bacurau

Símio Filmes

CinemaScópio

ARTE France Cinéma

Globo Filmes

SBS Productions

Canal Brasil

Telecine

Brazil

France

English

Português

transsexuality

resistance

autonomy

colonialism

backcountry

autonomia

grassroots movement

Leno

A masterpiece. This movie is a very faithful on how the remote Brazilian regions look like, and a very smart and realistic dystopian future movie, a genre that is very rarely well executed in Brazilian movies.

With over 200 credits on his résumé — often as a vampire or vampire-adjacent —, revered German actor Udo Kier has appeared in some very good films as well as some very bad ones; Bacurau, a retarded A Sound of Thunder/The Most Dangerous Game hybrid ripoff, falls in the latter category.

The beginning is more or less promising. Tony Jr. (Thardelly Lima), mayor of the Sierra Verde municipality, to which Bacurau (which may or may not be the Portuguese word for 'bumf---') belongs, has blocked the dam and put it under the care of armed guards. 

His reason for doing this, though, is not very clear; Tony’s seeking re-election, but I don’t think hijacking the water supply is going to get him a lot of votes. To wit, when he visits Bacurau, the locals all lock themselves in their houses, from which they cover him in insults; their bravura, however, never reaches the sticks-and-stones phase. 

Oddly, the locals are so poor that their hatred of Tony does not preclude them from accepting the food he brings them, but not so poor that they don’t all have smartphones and/or tablets — and why wouldn’t they? Otherwise, the town’s Wi-Fi would go to waste.

So far good, I guess. Things only really go to hell when one of the residents sees a “drone” flying with all the grace of Gazoo’s spaceship (the drone is obviously computer generated until it “lands”; then it becomes a prop). The drone belongs to a group of foreigners led by Michael (Kier, sadly not playing a vampire).

Their plan is to lay waste to the place — never mind that it’s already pretty much a wasteland —, first slaughtering the population and then literally erasing the actual town from the map (or, at the very least, from Google Maps), leaving it as though nothing and nobody was ever even there at all — and that includes the villains themselves. To that purpose, “I have documents that prove we’re not here,” Michael says at one point. I’d really like to know what kind of documents those are and how exactly they work.

During that same conversation someone says that they never use modern firearms, only old ones. This is also never explained. My theory is that all the impossible technology they’ve used so far has eaten up the budget for fancy weapons.

One of the “hunters” complains that another killed a child; I guess their plan was to kill all the adults and leave the children to starve, or something. Needless to say, these aren’t the brightest bunch of killers. For example, they cut off the electricity in the town only to attack in broad daylight.

This ineptitude mirrors that of the filmmakers, who take a premise that could might conceivably weight as social commentary and turn it into a Brazilian version of Hard Target — or Perseguição Sem Tréguas, as they call it there.

BACURAU | In Conversation with Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles | MUBI

Official UK Trailer #2

Bacurau directors Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles | BFI Q&A

The Directors of Bacurau & Sônia Braga on the Making of Their Brazilian Thriller

Bacurau( 2019)

If you come, come in peace

Overview

Top Billed Cast

Social

A review by Leno

Written by Leno on Mon Sep 23 2019

Media

Recommendations

Facts

Status

Original Language

Budget

Revenue

Keywords