Ônibus 174

I can't disagree more with the previous reviewer about this film. The subject is so completely eye opening for American's to see, I think it should be mandatory viewing for high school kids.

Rio de Janeiro is such a different kind of city compared to anything in our country. In the legal system, people are treated worse then animals. The police force is completely untrained. Thousands of homeless children walk the streets and are systematically murdered by police and people who are aggravated by their presence. To many people, killing off the homeless children is the only solution to a staggering social problem.

The kidnapper in "Bus 174" is a product of the city and the time. What started out as a basic robbery, became a hostage situation where social problems were brought to the attention of millions of people. He became an accidental spokesman for the plight of homeless children in Rio.

No one can guess how badly the police attempt to resolve the situation. It has become a case study for police all over the world on how a hostage situation can be poorly handled.

As a film, it kept my attention the whole time, and not using a narrator and letting the story unfold simply through interviews and news footage is classic documentary style. Too many filmmakers and news personalities put themselves into their films.

The filmmakers in "Bus 174" were able to capture the story of the hijacker, and the sociology of the city of Rio.

In June 2000 a young man tried to rob a bus in Rio de Janeiro and ended up in a hostage situation as the police SWAT team surrounded the bus. However the police at first fail to control the situation, allowing crowds of the public and the media to gather right outside the bus – putting the story at the top of every channel's output. The police gradually bring the situation outside under control but inside the pressure cooker of the bus things are only getting worse as the young man demands grenades, a rifle and a driver for the bus before starting to set deadlines for killing the passengers one by one.

I had never heard this story before watching this film so I had no idea where it was going or how it would end; in a way I suppose this makes it more engaging for me as a viewer because the main story was as good as the back story (the latter being the main thrust of the film). The opening credits sees the camera moving from the rich side of Rio down into the crowded and heaving slums and this start pretty much lays out the groundwork for a film that aims to highlight the total failure of any system in Brazil to deal with the rich/poor divide – a divide that is extreme beyond understanding. The main action on the bus is interesting but what the film does well is to build on this by looking at the background of Sandro – a background that is not uncommon among street kids. It deals with a complex range of issues and it poses many questions of the authorities.

It is not cheerful viewing because it can find no answers and it can find nothing here to give hope for the future. The social work system fails but the real failure highlighted here is the legal system and the police. The response to the bus hijacking is a shambles which ends badly due to the police and allegedly ends with them murdering Sandro in the back of the police van – a crime which the jury found them innocent of. The point that nobody seems to care for the disenfranchised poor is further hammered home with startling footage of the prisons and a history of the Candelária massacre. The final credits shows that nothing really has happened and certainly a scan of the newspapers online suggest that not much has changed in the last six years. The contributions are mostly very good and everyone is pretty honest however the uses the archive footage to very good effect to present the hostage situation while also expanding the discussion to look beyond it.

Overall then this is not a film to come to if you are looking for a fun night in. However it is a fascinating documentary that starts with one compelling event and uses it to look at the wider problems inherent in Rio's problems. Those that found City of God riveting should watch this as it does the job just as well but does it by raising the debate above street level and exposes the system failures that condemn poor to death or even brings it to them as the norm. Fascinating stuff but about as downbeat and hopeless as you could imagine.

One of those moments when you realise that you know nothing about the roots of another culture or society. And when you start learning, the pits of your stomach heave and your heart collapses at the deplorable and impossibly harsh reality of other people's lives.

Onibus 174 is the piecing together of an event that took place in 2000 in Rio de Janeiro, where a gunman took a busload of passengers hostage. The whole event was televised live to the nation, and this documentary film uses this footage, along with interviews with survivors, friends and relatives of the gunman, to document the implications of a society that treats its poor with a disdain not even reserved for deformed animals.

I can honestly say I have never sat through a film that was as difficult to watch as this. Throughout most of it my stomach clenched with anxiety, pity, misery and sadness. I cried at the plight of the street kids. I cried at the description of the child seeing his mother being stabbed 3 times and crawling about with a kitchen knife sticking out of her shoulder until she died in front of him. I cried at the last moments of the hijacking. And I cried at the reaction of the baying, blood-thirsty crowd of on-lookers at the end. And all this from live images. As it happened. The crude, devastating vicissitudes of a society wracked with poverty and hardship.

I have no idea why this film affected me so profoundly, but there's no doubt that is was largely to do with witnessing the real effects of social meltdown. The street kids are merely trying to gather together the semblance of an existence. Suddenly the thefts and muggings became understandable; I could be swayed to be not just sympathetic towards, but defensive of their crime, such is the extent of their horrendous degradation. And this is the result of rendering them invisible.

A film that's devastating, enlightening and enfuriating in equal parts. It has to be watched, but beware that it'll make you all too aware of your own impotence.

"It is no use killing street kids. There will always be more of them" - 17-year old at the Sao Martinho shelter

Brazil has approximately seven million children working and living on the streets of its cities, finding street life an acceptable alternative to abuse and poverty at home. On the streets, children do whatever it takes to survive including stealing, drugs, and often murder and most end up in juvenile detention centers or in prisons where their antisocial behavior is reinforced. In his powerful documentary, Bus 174, Jose Padilha depicts one of the most publicized media events of 2000, the hijacking of a city bus in a wealthy part of Rio by a former street kid, Sandro do Nacimento, igniting a standoff with the police and a media circus that lasted for hours on live TV.

The film begins with aerial shots of the crowded city while the homeless talk about the reasons they ended up on the streets. The camera then zooms in to a solitary bus surrounded by police. Due to the failure of the Brazilian police to cordon off the area, the crime scene swarmed with cameramen, journalists, police, and passersby, adding to a scene of chaos and confusion. As the drama begins to unfold, we see Sandro holding one hostage by the neck, walking up and down the bus as if not knowing what to do. At first, he seems uncertain, wrapping a towel around his face to hide from the camera and making unusual demands from the police such as a small sum of money, a hand grenade, and a bus driver.

Things become more desperate when one of the female hostages writes in lipstick on the windshield "He is going to kill us all at 6:00. Help us." but the police do nothing except to stand around. Police said later that the presence of the live TV cameras inhibited them from taking aggressive measures to end the ordeal.

Using original footage from Global TV and interviews with former hostages, friends and relatives of the hijacker, sociologists, and police who participated in the standoff, Padilha focuses not only on the events as they took place but on the circumstances that may have triggered it. Padilha said in an interview, "There was a lot of press coverage, but it was cloudy, it wasn't complete. It was focused on the police, and on the political side of the issue. I felt like I was missing something, I was missing the hijacker." What he finds does not justify Sandro's actions, but makes them more comprehensible. Padilha reveals that Sandro, at age 6, witnessed his mother being stabbed to death in a robbery.

Unable to come to grips emotionally with the tragedy, he became a street kid in the Copacabana area. By the time of the hijacking, Sandro had been in prisons and juvenile detention centers where, according to Padilha, inmates are regularly brutalized. In 1993, he was involved in an incident in front of the Candelaria Church where he often slept in which plainclothes policemen intentionally gunned down eight street children, many who were his friends, an incident Sandro recalls emotionally when shouting at the police from inside the bus.

The film also reveals the connection many of the hostages felt for their tormentor, though deeply afraid for their lives. Some felt that they were participating in a made for TV movie because of the times Sandro would tell them to pretend that they were in danger, although he yells at the police that "this ain't no action movie but some serious sh**". Though Padilha retains his objectivity throughout, he uses the hijacking to expose the weaknesses in Brazil's society that make incidents like this possible.

"We treat those kids as though they are invisible," he says. "They're always trying to get your attention, to get your money. And they realized they could get your attention through violence, because violence attracts the media." Bus 174 attracts our attention immediately and the tension is palpable until its moving conclusion. Like the recent City of God, Bus 174 does not provide any solutions but shines some light on a problem many would prefer to keep hidden, perhaps in the process making the invisible a little less so.

When I rented this movie I had no real idea what to expect. I had no prior knowledge of the event or of the documentary itself, and all that I was going on was another viewers review on my DVD rental queue, the rating itself, and the tagline - that the bus was hijacked and broadcast live on television.

It's also hard hitting. The team behind this documentary have done an amazing job to bring the story and the messages to the front of the film, and it's amazing just how well they do it.

Movie: The documentary hit me probably harder than any other documentary has in my life. One of the most interesting and compelling things about this is the way its structured as a movie. It builds tension and sets clear sides of good and bad guys. Then it begins to look at the characters involved and as the events occur in the actual footage they trigger investigations into characters and their past.

It's here where the film is most effective, using the real life footage from the News Stations to underpin the story, holding it together from opening to closing shot. The footage is also used as an indicator of when to jump to outside footage, be that from interviews of those involved from experts, friends and family. It's superbly pulled together.

This movie is charged with more emotion and suspense than many thrillers, and that can count against it too. You have to keep remembering that this is reality, not a movie, because it is so well delivered and paced that it can begin to feel as such.

To begin with your sympathies lie wholly with the hostages as the whole situation appears to be like any other hijack, but this alliance soon changes as the filmmakers begin to reveal the truth behind the hijacker and the situation.

Slowly, as you learn more about the hijacker you are also shown more about the Police, Street Kids, Prisons, and the mess the Country has found itself in. It's not only eye opening, it's emotionally strong and provides for a none too easy journey. A journey that should be taken and known.

It is perhaps the ending which is the most harrowing and shocking, although attention needs to be firmly kept on the equally shocking moments that brought us there. The slaughter of the Street Children by the Police, the overcrowded jails which make Guantanamo seem like a holiday camp, the Police corruption and finally the poor and destroyed life of Sandro do Nascimento, the Street Kid and hijacker.

The filmmakers have done an excellent job both in the editing and the initial structuring of the documentary. They've expertly pulled the audience to the drama of the situation and used that to highlight the real issues of their country in one of the most effective, thought provoking and intelligent documentaries I have ever seen.

Picture: Widescreen 16:9 The picture range sin quality as you would expect with the varying news sources used for footage. The quality ranges from traffic cameras to hand-held digital used in the exploration of Nascimento's past, of the Street Children and the interviews with those involved. So although the quality can be poor at times, it all adds to the realism and the actual footage feel of the film.

Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 As with the picture the audio varies in quality, but when it comes to the interviews it is clear, nothing more is needed here than the offered digital stereo.

Extras: The Making Of Bus 174 (30 minutes), Additional interviews (40 minutes), Assistant director Alexandre Lima's Social Frontiers photography exhibition, Interview with director Jose Padilha, Trailers

The Director gives a very insightful discussion on the movie, the process of making it, and ultimately life in Brazil for the less fortunate - the Street Kids who are so neglected and abused by society. You really do get a sense of pride in his Country and at the same time a sense of shame at what it is becoming. The discussion and insight into the movie and the process behind finding out about Nascimento and the Street Kids is quite in-depth, giving a good understanding of what is involved in making such a strong and unbiased documentary.

The additional interviews are even more eye opening and informative, not to say emotional. It's surprising just how informative they are and even without editing them down to the normal bite-sized interview snippets. Everything you'd want to know about the subjects in the movie are covered in these four interviews and from differing viewpoints, with Politics, Brazilian life and living on the streets at the forefront.

Overall This documentary ranks high in the top five I have seen to date. It's informative and insightful, providing the World with a view of Brazilian life we've never seen before and never been given the chance to understand.

It's a hard hitting and emotional film which presents to us the common and media portrayed view of what Nascimento is, slowly and carefully revealing his past to show the pain, hardship and mistreatment he and other Street Kids have received.

Dramatic and insightful, this film is one that should not be missed. It doesn't just show us about the Brazilian Street Kids either, it tells us more about the oppressed people of the World and how they can come to turn against the forces that created them. We need to understand them and to help them before they become like Nascimento.