YAY! Elite Squad 2 getting a theatrical release.

As you may have gleaned from my not-at-all-hyperbolic review of Elite Squad 2 back at Sundance, which I called “a two-hour Brazilian The Wire on steroids,” which “melted my face off and kicked my balls in,” I quite liked it.  But don’t take my word for it, just know that it was the highest-grossing Brazilian film of all time, and MGM hired the director for their Robocop remake (after Darren Aronofsky dropped out).  Well ice your face and cover your balls, because now Elite Squad 2 is getting a US theatrical release.

New Video has acquired the rights to Jose Padilha’s Elite Squad: The Enemy Within, which it has scheduled for theatrical release through its Flatiron Film Company label in the U.S. and Canada in October. Digital, VOD, DVD and television roll-out will follow in early 2012.

New Video has recently released Gasland, Waste Land and, on digital, Restrepo. [THR]

I hope it gets a bigger release than those other films. And wait, did you say “The Enemy Within?”  It’s understandable that they wouldn’t want to call it “Elite Squad 2” here in the US, where Elite Squad 1 didn’t get released, but holy lame titles, Batman. Elite Squad 2 is easily the best movie I’ve seen this year, and “The Enemy Within” is so generic-sounding it might as well be a Hoobastank album.

(And here’s some video I shot of Padilha at the Elite Squad 2 Q & A at Sundance:

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