**Animals go mad and men die (accidentally and not) at a
slaughterhouse in an impoverished, isolated corner of Brazil. **
In a landscape worthy of Cormac McCarthy, the river runs septic with
blood. Edgar Wilson makes the sign of the cross on the forehead of a
cow, then stuns it with a mallet. He does this over and over again, as
the stun operator at Senhor Milo's slaughterhouse: reliable,
responsible, quietly dispatching cows and following orders, wherever
that may take him. It's important to calm the cows, especially now that
they seem so unsettled: they have begun to run in panic into walls and
over cliffs. Bronco Gil, the foreman, thinks it's a jaguar or a wild
boar. Edgar Wilson has other suspicions. But what is certain is that
there is something in this desolate corner of Brazil driving men, and
animals, to murder and madness.