About 25 minutes into the movie, the affluent Brazilian crime boss Hernan Reyes gives a speech that sounds like an out-take from Empire-Building 101:
Reyes: Let me tell you a true story.I put the key passage in bold.
Five hundred years ago, the Portuguese and the Spanish came here, each trying to get the country from their natives. The Spaniards arrived, guns blazing, determined to prove who was boss. The natives killed every single Spaniard.
Personally, I prefer the methods of the Portuguese. They came bearing gifts. Mirrors, scissors, trinkets. Things that the natives couldn’t get on their own, but to continue receiving them, they had to work for the Portuguese.
And that’s why all Brazilians speak Portuguese today.
Now, if you dominate the people with violence, they will eventually fight back because they have nothing to lose. And that’s the key.
I go into the favelas and give them something to lose. Electricity, running water, school rooms for their kids. And for that taste of a better life, I own them.
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Thanks for the transcribing the quote. I'm using it in a cross-cultural psychology class as historically accurate and "da fuq? Fast Five??"
ReplyDeleteFinally Now the time to Watch Furious 7 which is Releasing On this Year 2015.
ReplyDeleteI found this quote astonishingly accurate. Unfortunately, most of the fans of these films didn't care much about this.
ReplyDeleteI can't BEGIN to explain how historically INACCURATE this stupid dialogue was, and to top it all off, HE'S A PORTUGUESE ACTOR WHO SHOULD KNOW HIS HISTORY!!!
ReplyDeleteWhen the Portuguese and THE SPANISH CAME HERE??? TO BRAZIL??? Boy, you are all idiots! Everybody who's anybody in both these countries (Portugal and Brasil, with the addition of the Spanish) has heard of a small thing called the TREATY OF TORDESILHAS, where the Portuguese and the Spanish divided the world into two, on a vertical line.... the Portuguese King insisted the line be brought a little to the left, because he suspected there was land on the bulge that is Brasil. So he sent PEDRO ÁLVARES CABRAL to that region of the globe, and he discovered Brasil. The Spanish NEVER had any hand in the discovery of Brasil whatsoever. If the dialogue had been about Latin America, that would be fine, but this is ridiculous, infuriating, offensive! You want to mess with history, use your own facts in your own history, USA. DO NOT mess with ours!
Geez. Idiots.