Bus 174

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.