There is something admirable about Beast Race even before we know whether all of its bets will pay off. At a time when Brazilian cinema still produces relatively few large-scale science-fiction films, seeing O2 and Fernando Meirelles invest in a dystopia set in a Rio de Janeiro transformed by climate change is, in itself, an event.

The premise is clever. By turning the jogo do bicho into a deadly competition followed by gamblers and sponsors, the film finds a metaphor that speaks both to Brazilian culture, especially Rio’s, and to universal themes such as inequality, spectacle, power, and survival. It is an idea born from something deeply ours that, at the same time, has the potential to travel well beyond Brazil.

And few things could be more deeply rooted in Rio. The jogo do bicho was created in Rio de Janeiro in 1892 as a way to increase revenue for the old Vila Isabel zoo. What began as a promotional game based on the association between numbers and animals quickly spread beyond the zoo gates and eventually became one of the city’s most enduring informal institutions. More than a century later, Beast Race takes that very imagery — the animals, the betting, the money, the parallel structures of power — and projects it into the future. It is science fiction looking ahead while carrying a history deeply rooted in Rio’s past.

Perhaps that is why the feeling at the end is less one of failure than of an opportunity only partially fulfilled.

As a director, Fernando Meirelles continues to display the qualities that have made him one of Brazil’s most important filmmakers. The visual quality is undeniable. The cinematography, the construction of that futuristic Rio, the production design, and the staging of the action sequences reveal a level of technical achievement rarely seen in Brazilian productions of this scale. Even when the screenplay loses momentum, the direction remains assured and elegant.

The cast also reinforces the scale of the project. The parade of familiar faces makes Beast Race one of the most ambitious recent productions in Brazilian cinema. At the same time, however, that choice exposes an issue our industry still needs to confront: the search for greater consistency in performance when entering highly stylized universes.

Not every actor finds the tone the story demands. Even so, there are clear standouts. Rodrigo Santoro commands the screen whenever he appears and creates an antagonist who manages to avoid the most obvious clichés. Seu Jorge brings humanity to a story that, at times, risks becoming overly conceptual. Matheus Abreu, as Gato, is convincing as the protagonist and gives the audience the emotional anchor needed to move through this world.

Part of the strangeness also comes from the genre itself. Brazilian cinema does not have a consolidated tradition of large-scale futuristic dystopias, and that inevitably shapes both production and the way we receive a project like this. Perhaps that is why some of the references remain so visible. It is difficult not to recognize echoes of The Hunger Games, Squid Game, Rollerball, and other stories that have turned competition, violence, and inequality into spectacle.

Influences are inevitable and are not a problem in themselves. The challenge is to absorb them until they stop feeling like references and become part of a distinct identity. At several points, Animal Race manages to do exactly that through the imagery of the jogo do bicho and its dystopian Rio. At others, however, the inspirations take up too much space.

Curiously, the aspect that most hurts the experience is not the races, the visual effects, or even the film’s lengthy running time. It is the narration that accompanies the competition.

Cast as the official voice of the spectacle, Anitta does what the role allows, but the character returns so often and explains so much of what is already happening before the viewer’s eyes that it produces the opposite effect from the one intended. The impression is that the screenplay does not fully trust the audience to understand the rules of the game or interpret events on its own. Because this structure repeats across two hours and multiple rounds, the insistence creates a feeling of redundancy and makes the film seem longer than it needed to be.

That is unfortunate because something much more interesting happens whenever Animal Race simply allows its world to exist. The Rio transformed by climate change, the spectacle of violence, the sponsors, the betting, and the idea of people risking their lives before an audience that turns everything into entertainment already says a great deal without anyone constantly explaining what we are watching.

None of this completely undermines the experience. Beast Race remains a relevant production because of the scale of its ambition and the courage to explore territory still rarely visited by Brazilian audiovisual storytelling. What remains is the sense that the film works better as a demonstration of what our industry is already technically capable of achieving than as the definitive work that will inaugurate a new era of Brazilian science fiction.

Even so, it is an important step. Perhaps it would be unfair to demand that a single film open that path on its own. What is most interesting about Beast Race is precisely that it proves Brazilian stories can engage with the global imagination without abandoning what makes them Brazilian.

A game created in a Rio zoo in 1892 reaches the future, transformed into a deadly spectacle. Between bets that pay off and others that might have been calculated more carefully, perhaps that, more than the races themselves, is the film’s greatest victory.