Most everyone in the film and entertainment industry tends to stick to what they know. Usually, they end up beating their trusted, jaundiced horses beyond death, losing disengaged audiences in the process. Luckily for City of God producer Fernando Meirelles, the lawless, violent favelas of Rio De Janeiro featured in that film are largely his own cinematic domain, and it remains bountiful. And he's using it wisely. If that first film is primarily an anarchic patchwork, his latest, City of Men, is a focused depiction of what forms between embattled pals in the bleakest of settings.

Director Paulo Morelli pits two teenage boys, Acerola (Douglas Silva) and Laranjinha (Darlan Cunha), against the pratfalls of their small hometown, known as Dead End Hill. Acerola is a young father trying to raise a son, while Laranjinha is on an impassioned search for the father he's never met. Oh, and then there are the drug lords. And the regular gun fights. And the overall disinterest and bloodlust-y intensity poverty often inspires. Sounds familiar!

But trust, the film's driven by a practically inconceivable intensity, belied by the characters' unaffected attitudes. The city's drug-related murders are so commonplace that the stock excuse for being late to work—"there was a gang war on the hill"—elicits a similarly deadpan response—"that's your problem, not mine." Such directness helps viewers negotiate a complicated political, emotional, and, at times, brutal narrative.

Don't be shocked, either, to leave the theater drenched by Brazil's overwhelming heat, which seeps through the screens and mesmerizes the audience via the film's rich cinematography. Beauty isn't inherent in the scenery—which is mostly a juxtaposition of stacked hovels against a backdrop of clear blue water and craggy cliffs—but is found in how Morelli overwhelms the senses with brightness, exaggerated sound effects, and an unsteady camera that rattles the brain. In a good way! Like laying in bed, over-medicated on cherry Robitussin. Which is always pretty fun.