Rulers of Fortune Review
Director: Heitor Dhalia, Rafael Miranda Fejes, and Matias Mariani
Date Created: 2025-10-29 22:21
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Rulers of Fortune Review: Directed by Heitor Dhalia, Rafael Miranda Fejes, and Matias Mariani, the Brazilian crime drama Os Donos do Jogo stars André Lamoglia as Profeta, Juliana Paes as Leila, Chico Díaz as Galego Fernandez, Mel Maia as Mirna Guerra, Xamã as Búfalo, and a lot of other actors. The Netflix series runs for eight episodes, each nearly an hour long and all centre around power, greed, and deceit in Rio’s high-roller gambling world.
Rulers of Fortune Review
The Brazilian series Rulers of Fortune follows Profeta, a young and insurgent outsider on his way up in Rio’s illegal world of gaming. His rise is based not on allegiance but on manipulation and deception. Once he begins to challenge the reigning Búfalo, who controls a large portion of the world of gaming by virtue of marrying into the Guerra family, the series becomes richer in a world of shifting power and where everyone is somebody else’s pawn.
While the Rulers of Fortune series tries to be a grand emotional crime epic, overall, it feels like it is trying too hard. There are enough frightening and tense scenes, but they don’t lead anywhere in particular. It started well, with wonderful characters and moral complexities, before slowly losing its way through the weeks.
A story of a man of modest beginnings becoming emperor is not a particularly new one. We’ve seen that sort of thing occur in almost every espionage show. Where Netflix’s Rulers of Fortune could have been interesting was if it put a fresh spin on this quite old formula, but it doesn’t really get there. It just continues hammering away with those same old beats: a betrayal here, a shoot-out somewhere in between, a prohibited love in between. Before long, it is very predictable, even a bit boring.
This Brazilian crime series tries to find a balance between glamour and grime, but never quite manages. All the show is just so beautifully done: sets, lighting, music-it all feels really super high-budget and slick. But beneath all the slickness, there isn’t really anything deep. The drama scenes feel contrived, and the story just plods one cliffhanger shock twist after another without giving the viewer any hope of getting invested in what’s happening.
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Profeta’s character progression might have been effective if the script had filled him in. Impulsive and ambitious, his redemption feels entirely rushed. André Lamoglia performs a fairly good job of playing out his ambition, though the script isn’t able to give us enough emotional depth as to why he does certain things. The same problem occurs with many other characters; Mirna, Suzana, and Búfalo all have such great introductions, but throughout the series, they stay one-dimensional and are defined by their role in the story rather than by their character.
One of the few bright spots is Leila, played well by Juliana Paes, who introduces some much-needed emotional depth to the otherwise disorganised story. There is a late twist concerning her and Profeta’s history that could have been a moment to reboot the series, but even that is rushed along and underexplored. Instead of taking the emotional depth of the scene, the show dives right back into another scene of violence and retribution.
Another problem is pacing. Each episode tries to fit too many subplots: political corruption, family grudges, love affairs, and business rivalries competing for shelf space. All of these make the narrative disjointed, and it is extremely difficult to keep one’s interest when so many are left hanging or concluded negatively. Halfway through the series, I was watching out of curiosity and not genuine interest.
Where the Netflix series Rulers of Fortune succeeds is in encapsulating Rio’s underbelly mood. The camerawork is close, dangerous, and the music energises the scenes. But it is here that these technical strengths cannot mask the writing deficit. Even the violence, intended to be repulsive or thrilling, is numbing towards the end.
I also hoped that more was done for the women on the show, rather than being secondary characters to men’s drama. Mirna and Suzana are instances of characters whose promise is started off well but gets squandered in the name of men instead of themselves. Better balanced storytelling, I felt, was what was to be anticipated from a crime drama in modern times.
By the final episodes, suspense is lost. The power struggles that had the potential to be grandiose felt hollow, and emotional moments for the characters did not always feel right. The finale attempts to tie up loose ends and opens itself up for debate with Profeta’s true parentage, but it’s too little, too late. The show ends at the same level of intensity that it began, but none of that emotion or depth carried through.
Netflix Rulers of Fortune Review: Summing Up
The Brazilian crime drama Rulers of Fortune is enjoyable and contains its quota of thrills, but lacks heart and is not original. The acting holds it together, but the pace drags quite unevenly and is repetitive. I feel like somewhere along the line, it forgot to make a story worth caring about. It is not exactly bad, but neither does it hold itself up as memorable. This series is almost like a missed opportunity because it wants more style than substance, and neither the emotional nor narrative impact is strong enough.
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