The pace is quick, the violence is rough, and the visual style is documentary as Padilha hammers home his point: Someone is forever in the pocket of someone else as The System constantly adapts to protect itself.
- Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly, January 04, 2012
When this Enemy Within settles into key action sequences, such as a stunning nighttime ambush or a daytime battle against Fabio, it becomes wildly entertaining.
- Robert Koehler, Variety, January 04, 2012
Throttles forward with remarkable aplomb and easily leaves the original in the dust.
- William Goss, Film.com, December 08, 2011
Elite Squad is just urgent and complex enough to make it clear violence is more than a matter for academic debate.
- Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail, December 02, 2011
A fast-paced, hard-hitting Brazilian police thriller.
- Stephen Farber, Hollywood Reporter, December 02, 2011
Jammed with cliches but completely engrossing.
- J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader, December 01, 2011
Here's a Brazilian thriller that's so angry and specifically political, it's hard to believe they got away with making it.
- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, December 01, 2011
It resembles a flow chart splattered with blood and spittle, more static and smeary in tone than the finger-pointing corrective director-cowriter Jose Padilha intended.
- Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times, November 17, 2011
No wonder Padilha's been tapped to helm a Hollywood reboot of "RoboCop.''
- V.A. Musetto, New York Post, November 11, 2011
Padilha's style is so urgent and immediate that you almost feel like you're in the midst of an especially advanced video game.
- Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News, November 10, 2011
The carnage, although explicit and frequent, is not grotesquely overdone.
- Stephen Holden, New York Times, November 10, 2011
Its conviction makes it tough to dismiss.
- Mark Holcomb, Village Voice, November 08, 2011
Padhila's cop thriller goes in with all guns blazing. This, the film suggests, is the only language these scum-bums understand.
- Xan Brooks, Guardian [UK], August 11, 2011
It's a massive improvement on the first film - bracing and tightly wound, in charge of its style, and fuelled by an indignation that makes the blood boil.
- , Daily Telegraph, August 11, 2011
There is a deep sense of indignation at the core of The Enemy Within, a righteous fury that pelts every cog of "the system" like machine-gun fire.
- Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald, November 30, 2011
Our hero's prominence sets up a stellar conclusion that retroactively questions both the first movie and its substantial audience.
- Sam Adams, Time Out New York, November 08, 2011
Moving to its own throbbing beat, Elite Squad: The Enemy Within offers an exhilaratingly bleak vision of what it describes as "an articulation of loathsome interests," in which the well-meaning suffer...
- Alison Willmore, AV Club, November 10, 2011
It's Wagner Moura's spotless embodiment of the principled Brazilian man for whom aggression and being coincide that renders the film such an immersive experience.
- Diego Costa, Slant Magazine, November 05, 2011
Its characters and conclusions both haunt.
- Nick Hasted, Little White Lies, August 15, 2011
The plot is worked out, at times, with a complexity worthy of The Godfather and characters as memorable.
- Nigel Andrews, Financial Times, August 11, 2011
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