City of God

the long version

The place: an all-too-real and unreal city on the brink of the millennium. Impelled by a gangsta rap recorded by a mysterious figure named Coda, a young black man kills two police officers with C-4-tipped bullets in a moment of surreal violence. The murder sets off a wave of rioting that envelops the city in a terrifying vortex. As the city burns and the police pursue their man, conspiracy theories abound, sleaze merchants and con artists of every stripe scramble to cash in, the gangsta rap soars to the top of the charts - and all of it is being broadcast on XXN, the omnipresent media entity. The characters in City of God must struggle to find love and redemption in a world where the lines between television and reality blur into an electronic/virtual reality hall of mirrors. The revolution may not have been televised, but now the apocalypse will be available on pay-per-view.