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NewYorkViews
Mar 11, 2015NewYorkViews rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Excellent casting, script, filming (most filming was done on locations) and based on a true historical account of notorious Brazilian slave trader Francisco Felix de Sousa's (died 1849) exploits in Africa's Dahomey (now called Benin)--based on "The Viceroy of Ouidah" by author Bruce Chatwin (Chatwin died in 1989). Chatwin supposedly changed the names of characters (such as from from Sousa to da Silva/bandit Cobra Verde) in his nonfiction due to the country where he did research having some sort of coup. What was interesting was to see the extent of the bandit Cobra Verde (an eighth generation Brazilian of Portuguese nobility) go from Brazil's underworld to Africa to become a highly successful grimy slave merchant and the means of the hell he did it with, contrasting with the wonders of nature's beauty of Brazil and Africa. There is much in the film--interesting characters and cultures, and the horrors of slavery.