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(Send a Bullet) Twenty-seven-year-old Eric Kohn is a protégé of Errol Morris. While Morris remains a singularity, a similar portmanteau, go-for-the-goofy-and-grab-for-the-glory sort of filmmaking is on display in Kohn’s feature debut, the renegade, runamok mural of a movie, “Manda Bala (Send a Bullet),” a documentary that won the top prize in its category at this year’s Sundance outing. “Manda Bala” is a wicked eyeful, but I wouldn’t count on it for absolute veracity, even while discounting the keepers of cinematic purity and of the Brazilian soul that have been perturbed. (It is a mere calumny, and not an oath against the criminal industries in that nation.) The largest frog farm in the world, in Central Brazil, and kidnappings of businessmen in a generally lawless São Paulo are a couple of the subjects the movie seems to be about in its first moments, but the ongoing informational assault is more in the wake of “Fast, Cheap and Out of Control”: here’s a bunch of viscerally observed materials, flashy and eye-widening as can be. What can you, the viewer make of it? It’s not traditional vérité, but there are metaphorical truths in Kohn’s brilliant, bravura mosaic. Heloisa Passos’ slick photography is integral. 85m. (Ray Pride)
“Manda Bala (Send A Bullet)” opens Friday at Pipers Alley.