No site da The New Yorker (http://newyorker.com/critics/cinema/?030120crci_cinema), há uma crítica bem justa sobre Cidade de Deus - City of God, para os gringos.

Uma das coisas legais que Anthony Lane, o crítico, escreve é sobre aquela violência social ser esquecida na mesma noite que o filme é visto. Ficam apenas as imagens bonitas. Vai um trecho:

"For once, "City of God" rises above its own brilliance, its ominous delight in those who are unfettered by morality, and takes the trouble to show that they are in fact not free but utterly lost, stranded in Purgatory and heading downward fast. That is a spiritual judgment, not a political one, and it suggests what this brutal and furiously stylish film might have become. Until he weeps, that boy looks like someone else's problem, and someone else's son; what we need to believe is that he could be ours."