Viva Riva! — review

Earlier this year, the documentary Benda Bilili detailed life on the streets of Kinshasa for a band of disabled musicians. Now, in the second of the week's African-set movies, homegrown Congolese gangster film Viva Riva! shows Kinshasa as a den of violence, corruption, prostitution and despair. Riva is an unlikable chancer returning to his hometown after scamming an Angolan gangster. He begins an affair with a local criminal's girlfriend while the Angolans arrive to kill him. Brutal and simplistic, the film nevertheless delivers rough excitement with a certain rude style. Money poisons, but that there's no other god seems its bleak conclusion.