Word: deus
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...artistry provides a rare glimpse of the Dantean squalor bearing down on Brazil's tourist beaches. Hailed as one of the best Latin American films of the past half-century, it was snubbed by Oscar, many critics complain, because of its violence. Set in Rio's notorious Cidade de Deus favela and narrated by a teen who manages to sidestep the ubiquitous criminal life there, it chronicles the slum's two-decade conquest by young narco-hoodlums. Its hopscotch storyline is as full of surprises as it is void of heroes, leading some to call it a Brazilian Goodfellas...
...toughest thug in the Rio slum of Cidade de Deus stands impatiently outside a brothel as his gang robs the patrons. Miffed at being excluded from the fun, he strides in and kills everyone. It's his first mass murder--the ideal calling card for a precocious psychopath. Li'l Ze, as he will come to be known, is 9 years...
...often--in Bosnia and Rwanda, for example--humanitarian workers have simply served as fig leaves, moral cover for big powers that did not want to get involved. As long as telegenic humanitarians put on a morally satisfying show of Western deus ex machina, caring for refugees on the 6:30 news, then governments can procrastinate. Take, for instance, the legal dithering of the Clinton Administration on Rwanda (where 800,000 dying in eight weeks amounted to an immense crime of omission): It depends on what the meaning of the word genocide...
WHAT IT'S ABOUT The eponymous deus ex machina (Sergi Lopez), who cheerfully greets a hard-pressed chap named Michel (Laurent Lucas) in the men's room of a highway rest stop. Harry claims they were at school together. Michel can't recall him, but he lets him into his life anyway. And why not? He has a miserable job, a sarcastic wife, three whining daughters and an auto that lacks air conditioning. Harry has mysterious amounts of time and money to lavish on them. Michel suddenly gets a new car, his grasping parents soon disappear, and the rest...
...fair, overall settlement" with the dissidents--hammered out perhaps by an independent panel. Lloyd's, still wallowing in red ink (according to market estimates, losses could total as much as $4.5 billion for 1998-2000), has yet to respond. The refuseniks for their part are hoping for a deus ex machina in the form of criminal proceedings launched by U.S. government prosecutors who have been investigating possible mail fraud involving Lloyd's. But Lloyd's remains confident that the arguments that won the case last week will triumph in the future...