Throughout the film, her mother, Gillooly, his idiot friend (Paul Walter Hauser) and a Hard Copy producer (Bobby Cannavale) offer their own opinions about her life, painting the picture of a mercurial, but perhaps misunderstood woman looking for
some poetic justice in a world that's abandoned her.
While chaos and bloodshed rule the
world of protagonist Rocket and those of his generation — psychotic druglord Li» l Zé, groovy playboy Benny and solemn Knockout Ned (singer Seu Jorge,
in his breakout role)-- City of God elucidates an underlying symmetry, exhibiting if not
poetic justice, then the street version of the same.