The opening sequence montage and its accompanying voiceover narration is almost documentary in nature as it introduces the city and its denizens. (whatDVD.net)

By combining sobriety and detachment, and unusually performed in the second person, the voiceover almost feels as if it comes from an angry archangel or another powerful supernatural entity. (PopMatters)

Voiceover narration in film and television has a long and rich history that began in the thirties, permeated Hollywood in the forties, shaped the address of television in the fifties, and counted among the favored techniques of the mostly male directors of the French New Wave in the sixties and seventies and of the New Hollywood Cinema up to the late eighties (Kozloff 33-39). (bnet)