City of Dreams-Mohit Ramchandani

City of Dreams is a harder-hitting version of Sound of Freedom that, unlike its predecessor, was swept under the rug and largely forgotten about.

Hollywood absolutely hates films like City of Dreams and Sound of Freedom because the big-wigs running the ship out there in the hills are incorrigible perverts and undoubtedly have handshake deals and hush-hush-don't-ask-don't-tell agreements with closeted pedophiles at Disney and all the other companies which have been ransacking the innocence of children since their inception.

It was mentioned in Mario Puzo's book The Godfather but excluded in the movie. In the book, when Tom Hagen takes a trip out to Hollywood to visit with Jack Woltz, he notices a young girl on the same private jet who later arrives at the Woltz compound with her mother. About an hour later Tom makes note of the little girl's disheveled appearance, indicating that she had been used as a sex toy for Woltz—all under the abject approval of her mother—as simply a right of passage for access to the keys of the Hollywood kingdom.

While this is only a fictionalized version of events, its inclusion in the novel leads me to believe that, especially back then, this was common practice. Eventually, the fissures would widen to the point that certain individuals would be undeniably outed. Fatty Arbuckle, Roman Polanski, Victor Salva, Harvey Weinstein, and as we are seeing play out in modern times Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs.

Maybe it is just my Midwestern ignorance of some disgusting pleasure that comes with the smog of Los Angeles, but crimes against children are the lowest, most disgusting offenses that a human being can possibly commit. But, in Hollywood, where within that deplorable industry such acts are a way of life, it is protected and made fun of. Is there any coincidence that actors like Macaulay Culkin, River Phoenix, Amanda Bynes, Corey Haim, Corey Feldman, Lyndsey Lohan, and Britney Spears (among countless others) develop severe mental issues and chemical dependencies or, even worse, expire at a very early age?

As much as I love movies, I despise the Hollywood factory that exploits the lives of those they depend upon to keep their perverted machine running. They push the garbage up to the top while attempting to stifle the voices that don't agree with them, more often succeeding in their twisted endeavors.

Fortunately, for us as fans simply seeking some sort of truth, there are artists like Mohit Ramchandani, who are willing to tell the stories that need to be told despite knowing the pushback they will receive from out west.

City of Dreams, while depicted as occurring in Mexico and Los Angeles, is based upon the egregious child slavery market in Mumbai, India. Over there—where the chaste system reinforces the walls of slavery to the point that it is practically impossible to overcome—child labor is just a way of life. Some parents are even so desperate for cash that they will deliberately blind their children's eyes with sulfuric acid as a means of extracting more funds from passersby when they are stationed on street corners to beg for money.

But instead of these events being shown with a Middle Eastern flavor, it is instead changed to the third-world setting of rural Mexico. The scam starts with men in expensive cars arriving in desolate areas posing as soccer scouts on the prowl for potential recruits. They then dupe the parents into relinquishing certain children into the hands of these "scouts" who promise to return their children as finely tuned athletes primed to blaze forth on a trail that ends on the grassy rectangular stage of the World Cup.

But once the children are carted off with their passport in the custody of the scout the truth becomes revealed, and the scout, who in reality is a coyote, drugs them into a sleepy paralysis with laced Coca-Cola's until they cross the border successfully and are then brought to a shuttered boarding house deep within the bowels of Los Angeles' worst areas. From there they are stationed in front of sewing machines and forced into slave labor with inhumane bunking conditions. Stitching name-brand clothing for 80% of the day with little hope for escape.

Ari Lopez' Jesus serves as a glimmer of hope in City of Dreams and begins to rebel against his captors, taking a stand by smashing his sewing machine—despite knowing that this will in turn induce a severe beating—and other times escaping to rendezvous with honest cop Stevens (Jason Patric), only to be thrust back into the life once the precautionary measures of corruption to keep the hideous underworld operation running are set into motion.

The ending of this film leaves the viewer with a sense of hollow satisfaction. Everyone gets theirs. Jesus gets his eventual freedom at the expense of his innocence and the operation becomes unfounded. But everyone knows that this is only a pinprick puncture of victory within a system that continues to run as I type this review, and, as much as I hate to admit it, we are all guilty in one way or another of supporting. Myself included. The beaten Adidas sweater I wear on my back with the torn cuffs was made in Indonesia and the black Gildan shirt with white block lettering of the five families was imported into Mexico from Columbia. And I don't even want to think of the sweat and blood that was expelled in order to get these items from the hands of those who created them to keep warm the bodies of those who prefer to look the other way.

City of Dreams forces you to sit and think about the violations of other human beings without the option of looking the other way. Here in America, there are only faint whispers of problems in a land far far away from the doorsteps of our cushy domiciles. But in City of Dreams, we are forced to ponder the what-if factor of it occurring here in the United States.

Unlike Sound of Freedom, which was created under the religiously coated umbrella of Angel Studios, City of Dreams was bereft of any precautionary measures. The violence was nauseating, the language coarse, situations unapologetically real, and the futility of destroying such evil empires made very apparent.

And this is no offense intended to the fine film that was Sound of Freedom. Which was an amazing slice of cinema that—based upon both the box office returns and Hollywood and their compromised critic minions' visceral reaction—I think the country recognized as the preemptive tremor of an inevitable regime change. But City of Dreams I thought captured the life of what these innocent people go through with greater accuracy.

This one was painstakingly gruesome in its depiction of human slavery, but how else can one portray something as sinister as when flesh dissolves into nothing more than currency for further profits?

Ari Lopez did an amazing job as Jesus and I thought Jason Patric and the rest of the cast were incredibly good in their parts. The compound lords made you cringe with both anger and disgust and the pain of Stevens' fruitless endeavor was exceptionally palpable.

Great flick and an important watch.

Stars: *****

Verdict: Watch

Cousins: Slumdog Millionaire, City of God, Sound of Freedom, Babylon, Oliver Twist