Bus 174 (2002)

A shocking, hypnotic look at a real-life disaster. In June 2000, an armed gunman hijacked a bus in downtown Rio de Janeiro. An angry, strung-out former street kid, he spent an afternoon threatening his hostages while the lurid drama was broadcast live over the national TV networks. The extensive newsreel footage from this terrible event forms the bulk of Bus 174, but director Jose Padilha takes time to fill in the background, too: the poverty-broken world of the gunmen is detailed, and so is the political situation that led to some ludicrous decision-making on the part of the authorities during the siege. The fact that most viewers outside Brazil don't know how the ordeal ended will add to the suspense, but either way this is a gripping experience. The sight of the crazed hijacker, self-consciously styling his weird version of action-movie villainy, will haunt you long after the film is over. --Robert Horton Amazon.com

Great film

This film is the story of a desperate act and it's protagonist.
The story jumps between the dramatic kidnapping of a line bus in Rio and the past of the perpetrator Sandro. Avoiding moral judgments the filmmaker finds the right angle to open our eyes on a dramatic reality we often tend to thrust aside or romanticize. While the stock footage and some shots (the intro is one of the longest and most incredible helicopter shots ever) visually perfectly stick together, the interviews sections in between feel a little poor. Great film though!
January 5, 2008

Bus 174

This terrifying real-life nightmare is like watching a car accident in slow motion. The unending cycle of poverty in Rio creates the conditions for such an atrocious crime. Yet it's also understood this could happen most anywhere similar social dynamics exist. More than anything else, the film posits, Sandro feels forgotten and invisible- he wants to be recognized, wants others to feel and acknowledge his anger at being discarded and neglected for so long. Leading up to its shattering conclusion, the film makes us watch what otherwise we'd too readily avoid, and in the end, Sandro gets his wish. July 18, 2007

Social and economic rights

I first heard about Bus 174 in a law seminar on human rights and culture. For a high school class I am teaching on human rights, I was looking for films to show. Bus 174 is an excellent film in its own right (well directed and edited, etc). But it will certainly prove educational in my class. The film asks the viewer to consider to what extent the state is responsible for lawlessness when lawlessness is a result of the desperation that springs from poverty and social marginalization. Given insufficiently trained police and their resultant tendency toward brutality, and a criminal detention system in which prisoners live under inhumane conditions, how can anything but anger and violence amongst prisoners and ex-convicts result? Hard questions confronted by the robbery/hostage incident aboard Brazil's Bus 174; an incident depicted exquisitely by this film. April 6, 2007

Glob Of Reality Thrown In Right In Brazil's Beautiful Face..

This documentary chronicles the hijacking of a bus by a drugged and desperate Sandro Rosa do Nascimento, who upon realizng the national spectacle that he is causing, begins to create a drug-influenced show that mixes criminal bravado, important social commentary, and terror that exposes some of the weaknesses of Brazil.

It turns out that this hijacking became the most infamous crime in Sao Paulo's history, if not the whole of Brazil's.

When we examine his past, it turns out that Sando do Nascimento was a survivor of the "Candelaria Massacre" which occured seven years earlier. In this, the police took revenge on homeless kids by converging and firing on them while they slept, killing seven of them.

That event was PREVIOUSLY the most infamous crime in Brazil's memory.

The fact that Nascimento came from that tragedy to create the next big one, topped by the fact that during the siege he actually MENTIONED the killing of his friends at Candelaria, and his witnessing the murder of his mother at a young age, and his phrasing, "Brazil, check this out" & "How can you let someone with such a pretty face die?" hit me as this whole criminal act having a higher meaning in Brazil society.

It was as if this whole thing occurred to motivate the government and people of Brazil to do much more to try easing the social ills and unequality. That pretending that these things dont happen and that the problems of certain people don't exist will only create ticking time bombs that will eventually begin to constantly explode directly in their faces instead of somewhere "out of sight", where it is preferred. Actually, I am suprised that the result of this was not much worse.

It's horrible that an innocent life was lost during this, and its just as sad that the government hasn't done much since to help more at-risk individuals from completely going off the deep end like Nascimento. May 28, 2006

He escaped violent death, only to find it later, in a different way.

"On July 12, 2000, the Rio de Janeiro police trapped a man who was trying to rob a bus. He took eleven hostages, and the local SWAT team was called. This incident became known in Brazil as the Bus 174 affair". That is the way in which this Brazilian documentary, directed by Jose Padilha and Felipe Lacerda, begins.

Truth to be told, I was afraid it was going to be too violent. I wasn t wrong, but there is much more to "Bus 174" than violence. This documentary includes live footage regarding what happened, but also interviews with street kids that knew Sandro, the man who ended up as the main protagonist of this tragedy. He didn t have a purpose, he didn t ask for anything, he just was stopped in the middle of a robbery and ended up trapped in a situation he couldn t handle.

The documentary allows us to be witnesses to Sandro s life, and to the events that would take him from his home, to the streets, a reformatory, prison and finally bus 174. Some interviews with a social worker, a sociologist, a journalist and the mediator that worked in this case allow to shed more light on this event, and on Sandro s life. For example, we learn that Sandro never knew his father, and that he witnessed the murder of his mother at a young age. After that, he ran away from his home and started living in the streets, joining a gang of "meninos da rua". Sandro was also one of the survivors of the "Candelaria massacre" of children that lived in the street, that happened in the early 1990 s. He escaped violent death, only to find it later, in a different way.

In general, I think that the directors are trying to point out that the reason why Sandro, a victim of the "Candelaria massacre", became the perpetrator of another tragedy is not circumstantial, but has to do with a system that allows many children to be invisible to those that are well off, until the children grow and confront them with violence. In my opinion, that conclusion may be pertinent for Brazil, but it is also relevant for many other countries. Social exclusion and disregard are never valid answers.

All in all, highly recommended.

Belen Alcat April 16, 2006

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