Pretty Good

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Tchéky Karyo is frankly OUTSTANDING in his role as Hermes. The disturbing, quiet, intense, dangerous man, superb! I feel this is Peter Coyote at his best, a vulnerable, intelligent, humane man who comes face to face with the reality of life that previously he had only viewed through the lens of his camera.Again those remarkably talented Brazilian actors and actresses just continuously amaze me. As in another film I very much enjoyed that was shot in Brazil, BOCA, the Brazilian talent is immense. Previous comments have outlined the plot and so forth. I would only add that this film is tense and one comes away from it with a sense of discomfort, and that is something to be so affected by a film when all too often once the house lights come on there is no residual emotional connection.I noted on the main details page that the Spanish version is several minutes longer than the USA video version and that REALLY irks me. This should be available, as should Zalman King's BOCA, on DVD and in full length, unedited, uncut, uncensored.If one just wants to waste a couple of hours in amusement this is not the film to see, if one wants to have a visceral reaction and to be taken by one's collar and dragged into the frenetic and all too grim world of the invisible people of a great metropolis then by all means see EXPOSURE aka A GRANDE ARTE.

Whoever owns this movie please release on DVD. This is a cult type movie centered around knife fighting. The back story, cinematography, and allure of a dangerous earthly South America draws the viewer into what is probably Peter Coyote's most interesting work. Highly recommended! Very few movies transmit the feeling of a place as well as this movie does so visually. I have been searching for this movie for sometime and wonder why it hasn't been released on DVD. Early Walter Salles is much better than most of what is being shot today. Coyote plays a photographer living in Rio that avenges the death of a prostitute friend and goes on a journey through South America to do so. In the process of this his character learns to fight with knifes and becomes involved in an underworld whose rules he is forced to adapt to and survive.

I viewed this movie a few years ago and was impressed by the training scenes, however, I have always wondered where to get knives like the ones featured in the film, I cannot for the life of me remember their names even. Any help would be appreciated. I am a budding knife collector and follower of the art of knife fighting, I just wish there were more of it in the film. Anyone know of similar flicks out there I could check out? This is my first time ever submitting anything to this site and can't wait to start talking movies with people, they are after all, one of my greatest passions. Another reason for me to like this movie I guess is that I am in school to become a professional photographer!

This is a well made, low key thriller about knife fighters in Rio. Peter Coyote gives one of his best performances. The only quibble I had with the film is that I wanted to see A WHOLE LOT MORE KNIFE FIGHTING!After all that great, cool set up and the main character undergoing the Art of Knife Fighting training. I was a bit disappointed we didn't get many more knife fights. This could have been the ultimate knife fighting movie. Still, it's good. But when during the final fight sequence I wanted something more spectacular, blood spraying to the heavens like the end of Kurosawa's Sanjuro. And after seeing the extraordinary knife fighting sequence in Kill Bill I was expecting a little more.