The trash in Trash isn’t real. It’s a stunning mountain of garbage engineered by an Anglo production company for a cast of Brazilians to climb onto as they search for anything of value. The trash isn’t real because the actual landfills of Rio de Janeiro contain high levels of toxic waste. This artifice sums up the awkward underpinnings of Trash, an action adventure about three orphans, embroiled in a plot to take down a crooked politician. The trash and the politics are real but the slick production and Disney-atmosphere is anything but. That said, Trash remains fun, mostly thanks to the film’s rambunctious local leads.
Trash kicks off like a continuation of City of God, the searing coming-of-age drama also set in Rio. A teenage boy points a gun at someone’s head while sweat rolls down his brow and his hands shake. It’s hard to imagine that this is the work of Stephen Daldry, the director of such emotionally-wrought dramas as The Hours, The Reader and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
Jumping back in time, the gun-toting teenager is shown climbing a mound of garbage. He is Raphael (Rickson Tevez), and in a city where poverty is the norm, trash-picking is his day job. After finding a wallet, he tucks it into his pocket and thinks nothing of it. When a malevolent police force shows up looking for it, Raphael teams up with his friends to find out what’s so precious about a few dollar bills and some prayer cards. The cards turn out to be clues and as the boys discover, they lead to a major corruption scandal.
Before long, Trash drops all solemnity and turns into a Hardy Boys mystery set in a favela. Brazil’s political reality pops up but it’s mostly to establish bad guys and to keep the plot moving. Rooney Mara is a cardboard cutout of a missionary who aids the boys by teaching them rudimentary English and escorting them to a prison visit. Martin Sheen is the wine-guzzling priest who bumbles around like a lovable dad. They’re a beneficent presence, though neither character is developed in any meaningful way.
Raphael is the ringleader who found the wallet, Gardo is his nimble friend and Rato is the runt of the group who lives in the sewers and sneaks through holes in the wall. Together, they’re a skinny, tank top-wearing gang with an endearing sense of spunk. And the stakes are high since the buried treasure they’re after is more than just cash, it contains a ledger detailing a powerful politician’s bribes.
Trash is interwoven with clips of a low-fi documentary featuring the boys as they narrate their story. This is an unnecessary device, and containing such stale lines as “We needed a miracle,” it serves no purpose. Cinematography by Adriano Goldman (Jane Eyre) is accomplished, and quite pretty for a South American slum. The action sequences and chase scenes are the film’s strongest moments; they are cleverly orchestrated and genuinely exciting to watch. The poppy soundtrack and fast-paced editing make Trash seem like an especially gripping episode of “CSI Brazil.” With its bright colors and physical stunts, the film resembles a kid-centric update of That Man from Rio. If Sheen’s character is jaded by years of toil (“Don’t waste your life fighting battles that make you bitter or make you dead”), the boys have all the vibrancy he lacks. It’s their enthusiasm, camaraderie and nonstop energy that help save Trash, keeping us engaged and distracting us from the film’s mawkish script.
As Daldry has stated in an interview with The Guardian, “Any situation where I feel boxed in freaks me out,” and Trash is certainly outside whatever box the director had been living inside. Like Slumdog Millionaire, Trash functions as a social justice piece that ends on a feel-good note, but if the film was intended as Oscar bait, it fails miserably. It’s an overt tearjerker and the politics have only a thin connection to the reality in Brazil. Like the trash itself, it’s dazzling to look at—but totally fake.