"City Of Men" follows two central characters, best friends Ace (Douglas Silva) and Wallace (Darlan Cunha), as they are unwittingly caught up in a vicious gang war in their dilapidated favela. Ace struggles with his newfound responsibilities as a young father while Wallace searches for his errant father. Meanwhile, a brutal turf war breaks out around them, and Ace is reluctantly swept up into one of the gangs after threats on his life leave him with little choice but to join in the mayhem.

To the first question of whether this 2007 favela flick is a sequel to Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund's 2002 oft-reviewed "City Of God", the answer is no. It is in fact a spinoff from a 2002 TV series of the same name, "Cidade Dos Homens" (City Of Men), which ran four seasons in Brazil. In addition to that, if you're wondering will the movie make sense without watching the TV series, the prevailing opinion is that knowing the series will benefit the movie experience, since you'll need to get familiar with the two main characters, Acerola (Douglas Silva) and Laranjinha (Darlan Cunha).

There are flashbacks in the movie to scenes from the TV series. So for the uninitiated, the movie "City Of Men" is confusingly similar to "City Of God", both of them being coming-of-age crime dramas about two boys growing up in the Brazilian slums surrounded by machine guns, drugs and promiscuous sex. Themes of friendship, loyalties and even family planning are explored amidst the gritty day-to-day events that bind these boys. A soap-like backstory about their biological fathers also serve the final story well.

However, despite a tightly edited effort, "City Of Men" suffers the same drawbacks in "City Of God" - they simply have too much ground to cover. A sincere and earnest attempt to better tell the TV story is hampered by rushed endings and the tumultuous balance between emotional downtime and shooting chases. We cannot possibly be allowed to savour the Rio slum details against such an epic drama with so many significant events happening in quick succession.

Jonathan Haagensen gets the nod for the best performance, as gang head Midnight. However, "City Of Men" is probably a better TV series than a movie. Try other favela flicks like "Lower City" (2005), "Carandiru" (2003) and "Man Of The Year" (2003) if you enjoy Brazilian movies about life in the slums.