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Ônibus 174 (2002)

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44 out of 46 people found the following comment useful :-
High-impact documentary will have you examine your thoughts on urban violence, 11 February 2005

Author: debblyst from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Rio de Janeiro, June 12th 2000: it's Valentine's day in Brazil. In Rio's only favela-free middle-class neighborhood (Jardim Botânico), a young black man, drugged and armed, hijacks bus 174 with a dozen passengers in one of Rio's busiest avenues in mid-afternoon. What would have been just one more event in Rio's violence statistics turns out to be a nationwide live-TV horror show. The traffic stops, the elite police surround the area, the bandit threatens to shoot the passengers and then kill himself. The "negotiation" lasts four hours, involves even the governor of Rio de Janeiro state, in what became one of the highest rating events on Brazilian TV history and exposed one of the most stupid and catastrophic police strategies ever devised.

As the negotiation goes on, TV reporters find out that the young hijacker is in fact a survivor of one of Rio's most horrendous crimes: as a young street kid he had escaped being murdered by policemen in the infamous Candelária child mass murder in the early 90s and, instead of being protected by the government, he was sent to a reform unit under appalling conditions (the facilities of the reform unit are some of the most shocking scenes in "Bus 174"). He had also, as a young child, witnessed bandits stab his mother being to death by bandits in front of him.

This powerful documentary includes live TV scenes of the actual hijack and its tragic denouement -- the shooting of one the victims and the bandit's arrest and subsequent assassination by the police, reported then as suicide and eventually proved in court to be manslaughter. It also contains interviews with social workers and sociologists (some of them insightful, others the usual B.S.), shocking interviews with bandits and street kids who knew him, and the testimony of some of the passengers and policemen who were part of the action. If this were a work of fiction, it would be hard to believe, but it's all true.

The opening sequence is especially powerful and revealing: it's one uninterrupted aerial shot of Rio's beautiful shoreline, leading to the imposing mansions of the wealthy, then up to the forest on top of Vidigal hill -- and suddenly the camera tilts downwards and, like a punch in the jaw, we see the immense favela of Rocinha, the largest in Latin America, with some 200,000 inhabitants -- all of that part of the same neighborhood, high-profile wealth and destitute poverty co-existing side by side, sharing the same few square miles.

This is a film that poses a series of difficult questions on violence, public education, social welfare, child abuse, imprisonment policies, juvenile crime, police training and strategy, police abuse, drug addiction, TV ethics and responsibility, the role of social work and rehab, poverty and injustice. No easy answers or solutions here, but very important and disturbing questions all the same.

Do not watch this if you're in search of light entertainment! On the other hand, if you want to know a little bit about what it's like to live in a big city in the Third World -- where the rich and the poor are simultaneously so close (geographically) and far apart (in human and social rights) at the same time -- don't miss it!! If you live in a rich country, prepare to be shocked.

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41 out of 44 people found the following comment useful :-
Devastating, 20 April 2004

Author: noimagination from London, UK

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.

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23 out of 25 people found the following comment useful :-
Exposes the weaknesses in Brazil society, 23 August 2004

Author: Howard Schumann from Vancouver, B.C.

"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.

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15 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
It is one of the best documentaries I have ever seen, 29 October 2004
Author: frnja from Croatia

This film is an example of in-depth journalism, the way it is not done in the mainstream, commercial media. Instead of focusing on the hijacking of the bus, which is the most attractive footage in this documentary, this documentary decides to explain the context and causes that led the hijacker to perform a suicidal, desperate action, such as hijacking a public bus in the middle of the day. It is an extremely delicate and elaborate work which attempts to present an all-encompassing picture, one that forbids taking sides easily. It is not excusing the perpetrator of the crime in any way, but, still, it is demonstrating how much information we are missing when we, for example, read daily crime reports in newspapers. Instead of playing on the card of the expected outrage over this drug-addicted person who clearly did something extremely wrong, this film will take you several steps further. By showing a more complete frame of Brazilian society in a fierce tour de force, the authors of this film make the spectator question his or hers opinions and attitudes over and over again. It is a documentary that sticks with you for more than one day.

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15 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-
Nurture Vs Nature –It's Not All Black And White. Bus 174 Delves Into the Gray, 28 May 2005

Author: Shaun (canisminor_@hotmail.com) from Canada

On June 12, 2000 Sandro de Nascimento stepped onto a bus in Rio de Jeneiro, brandished a handgun and demanded money from its patrons. It was just another day in Rio. Well, it was, until an unnecessarily prompt response time by police turned the simple robbery into a complex hostage situation destined to be botched through incompetence. Toss in virtually unrestricted media coverage throughout the five-hour ordeal and what followed was a sequence of dramatized misfortunes to rival the wet dreams of any reality TV producer.

Bus 174, is a documentary by Jose Padilha, focusing on the "how's" and "why's" of the avoidable tragedy that was this day-long fiasco. Relying heavily on in-your-face news footage that was broadcast live to Brazilians around the country; as well as in-depth interviews with hostages, police officers and friends and family of Sandro, Padilha inter-cuts the events of June 12 with the story of Sandro's life as a doomed street kid shunned from society. In so doing, Padilha addresses that age-old ideological argument of nurture vs nature. Did Sandro instigate the events leading to this tragedy of police incompetence simply because it was bread into him? Or might there be more to the story? Had he believed the former, Padihla would have had a much shorter film on his hands. Fortunately for us though, he chose to go against the teachings from the "school of Bush", painting the scenario, not in black and white, but in a muddled gray.

And so we are told the story of a child who, after witnessing the brutal murder of his mother at the age of 5, was destined for a life on the streets where crime is simply a means of survival. We are told of the socio-economical issues in Brazil, where its class system has divided the nation to a point where rich ignore the poor (unless it's to drop slabs of rock on their heads while they sleep). We are told of a government whose brutal attitude towards street kids helped instigate the Candelaria massacres (where Sandro again got to witness the slaying of the people he called family). And we are told of a penal system so inhumane and violent, people would rather die then go to jail. What we are told is that violence begets violence.

As manipulative and subjective as some documentary film-making can be, it is often easy for critics to discredit a film like this as being socialist propaganda (just ask Michael Moore). But it is to Padihla's credit that he is able to avoid this by simply presenting us with the information he has acquired. We are not force-fed opinions and told what to believe, nor is Sandro portrayed as some sort of martyr for equal-rights, we are simply given the full story and are then left to draw our own conclusions.

Because what some may see as black and white, the rest of us see as shades of gray -Shaun English

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14 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
Suffocatingly sad wake-up call, 2 November 2003
Author: hecs from Chicago, Il

I just saw this movie, and I cannot imagine a more terrifying, sad, and heartbreaking piece of film existing. this movie is simply devastating. I was sobbing within the first 20 minutes. A young man of 19(who looks about 50)hi-jacks a bus and we see the results of an agonizing life play out before our eyes. It is hard to watch, and hard not to deeply care for Sandro. I cannot put into words how heartbreaking and important this movie is. Sandro's life is irrevocably doomed, and we discover there are thousands almost exactly like him, roaming the streets of Rio, desperate and hungry for any kind of social acknowledgement. It should be required viewing for the human race.

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9 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Dramatic, insightful and excellently crafted. One of the best documentaries I've seen., 27 January 2006

Author: Richard Brunton (imdb-update@brunton.org.uk) from Edinburgh, Scotland

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.

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5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
A fascinating documentary of challenges and failure exposure that is not an easy watch, 20 June 2006
Author: bob the moo from Birmingham, UK

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.

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16 out of 28 people found the following comment useful :-
Stunning and enthralling, 13 August 2004
Author: tireless_crank from Maryland

There is little that can be said about this film that isn't obvious in the film itself. It is amazingly well-crafted (with the exception of the superfluous sociologist sequences) with the editors building their points up to the last ten minutes at the bus which are among the best done scenes I've ever scene on film. The fact that they were working with only existing footage is truly amazing, like building an opera from random tunes recorded on a street.

The Brazilian police are shown as incompetent and murderous. Once Sandro fired the gun in the bus, he was doomed. It was the mistakes of the police that got the girl killed also.

The vision of the Brazilian penal system certainly lends some weight to the portrayal of the street kids as in the grip of a monstrously distorting and abusive society.

Reinforces my desire to never visit Rio.

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
The film is brilliantly told through interviews and news footage., 26 July 2004
Author: shootfilmordie from Cleveland, Ohio

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.

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