Starring Douglas Silva and Daran Cunha. In Portuguese with English subtitles. Rated 14A. Opens Friday, February 29, at the Fifth Avenue Cinemas

The males in City of Men are hardly grown. And some are destined not to reach even a ripe young age. Such is the ghetto-unfabulous life of a Brazilian favela as seen in this relatively calm slice of life in Rio de Janeiro, from the producers of the much more frenetic City of God.

The polished-looking movie, utilizing desaturated colours that alter Rio’s picture-postcard profile, is a spinoff of a popular TV series of the same name. Although the feature recycles some of the show’s characters and settings, this City doesn’t require any previous knowledge to captivate viewers with a tale that centres on two lifelong friends, both about 18 years old and grappling with a heritage of growing up without fathers.

One, the round-faced Acerola (Douglas Silva), already has a baby boy with teenaged Cris (Camila Monteiro), the only girlfriend he has known. Handsome pal Laranjinha (Darlan Cunha) is preoccupied with a tip leading to the father he never knew. When he does find that man, a petty criminal played with quiet dignity by Rodrigo dos Santos, it unlocks long-held neighbourhood secrets that threaten the friendship of our adolescent heroes.

This subplot, along with some last-act fireworks between rival drug gangs, may be a little too deterministic; the tale hardly needs a big gotcha ending to convey the conflict these lads are born into. For the most part, though, director Paulo Morelli, working from the script he wrote with Elena Soarez (both series veterans), keeps the violence as background noise. Shoot-’em-ups, when they do happen—mostly involving a charismatic hoodlum (Jonathan Haagensen) and his resentful top lieutenant (Eduardo ”˜BR’ Piranha)—are represented as surpassingly random and ill-conceived, from a strategic viewpoint. Kind of like kids with guns, you could say.

Because the leads were also in the tube version, which started in 2002, the film offers occasional flashback footage of them as preteens and older, so you actually watch the protagonists grow up. Thankfully, the filmmakers don’t overdo it—just one measure of restraint in an unusually thoughtful movie about people who too rarely get the chance to stop and think.