Boca Reviews

Technically proficient to a fault, BOCA purports to be a serious political docudrama examination of the genocide of Brazilian street kids. However, given that this film was made by sexploitation maven Zalman King, it is more of an exercise in exploiting the death squads of Brazil as a backdrop for a profusion of orgasmic sex scenes. Ace US reporter Jennifer "J.J." James (Rae Dawn Chong), scours Brazil for the story of a lifetime under the keen eye of shutterbug and former lover Reb (Martin Kemp). After befriending a shoeshine boy, Tomaz (Patrick De Oliveira), bleeding-heart liberal J.J. feels compelled to expose the government-approved conspiracy of silence against the slaughter of these homeless outcasts. The key to J.J.'s scoop is slum king Boca (Tarcisio Meira). Soulless killer with a finger in every crime pie, Boca acts as armed guardian angel for the urchins, whom merchants pay soldiers to eliminate in order to ease the economy and promote tourism. Foolishly trusting Boca, J.J. allows him to convince her to lure away the front man for the merchants' association, and then coolly informs her she must kill this go-between (Carlos Dolabella) or die herself--that's Boca's ingenious method for keeping people in his pocket. By the time J.J. learns that Boca killed Tomaz in order to ensure her worked-up complicity in his retaliation against the merchants, Reb arrives to sacrifice himself in a bloody shoot-out. After stabbing Boca to death, a shattered J.J. realizes the futility of her good Samaritan acts. Sweet-talked into handing over a video of the sanctioned child-killings by CIA agent Jesse James Montgomer (Martin Sheen), J.J. heads back to America as Brazilian leaders continue espousing their official story while the genocide continues unchecked. Fever-pitched in the atmosphere of Rio carnival frenzy, BOCA heavy-breathes its way into a cinematic hall of shame. Far from being a South American UNDER FIRE, this thriller (full of literal climaxes) uses an international disgrace for sexy local-color value. To Zalman King and his associates, drag queens high-heeling it on parade and blindfolded tykes being machine-gunned are grist for the same cheap thrills mill. Potential audiences should be forewarned that King doesn't stop at the merely tasteless: The corpses of street kids are scattered throughout the storyline as part of a sex-and-death arousal schema. When he's not tugging at the viewers' genitals with too much fervor, King is boring the audience with a Joseph Conradian tale of the Brazilian criminal elite. Although Meira as Boca makes a despot evil enough to make one's skin crawl, one effective theatrical turn cannot compensate for so many other dismal performances. Worse than lame characterizations, however, is the film's rhythmic use of flashbacks and flashforwards. Repeating itself visually and thematically, BOCA seems to be edited with out-takes of the same scene. The upshot of the film's "political" message to North American audiences? "Let's screw and be glad that we aren't street kids in Rio." Hardly a sophisticated political science documentary, BOCA is so morally tacky that it fails as an erotic thriller as well. (Graphic violence, extreme profanity, extensive nudity, substance abuse, sexual situations, adult situations.)