Amazon.com video review:
Hector Babenco, who went on to direct the acclaimed Kiss of the
Spiderwoman, made an international splash with this gritty portrait of
juvenile poverty and street crime in Brazil. Pixote (Portuguese slang for
"Peewee") is the name of a chubby-cheeked 10-year-old runaway played by
real-life slum kid Fernando Ramos da Silva. He's a natural, creating a
childlike and vulnerable character left emotionally hardened and morally
adrift by his brutal experiences. In an overcrowded São Paulo "reform
school," a cross between a prison and an army barracks, he learns the hard
facts of survival as he watches gangs prey on weaker kids, and the
cops and guards abuse, beat, and even murder their charges. Pixote
escapes and turns to street crime in Rio with a small gang, but his dreams
of big money and a good life are dashed as they play at crime in a violent
kill-or-be-killed world. Equal parts exposé and social drama,
Pixote dramatizes the plight of millions of children who live on the
streets or get ground up in the system that breeds hardened criminals from
juvenile
delinquents. Like Luis Buñuel's Los Olvidados, one of Babenco's
inspirations, this occasionally melodramatic portrait of poverty is shocking
and affecting, but no more so than da Silva's own life story. After
completing the film he sank back into poverty and crime, and died on the
streets. His life became the subject of the 1996 film Who Killed
Pixote?, which showed that despite the outcry created by Pixote,
Brazil has done little to alleviate these conditions. --Sean Axmaker
