Review: Ônibus 174 (2002)

"Bus 174"

On a June day in 2000 in the city of Rio de Janeiro a
nervous young man boarded a bus on a busy street,
pulled a gun out and took the vehicle and its
passengers hostage. The police are slow to act,
neglect securing the area and seem helpless to resolve
the sudden crisis. This little incident attracts the
TV news crews and, suddenly, the hijacking is a
national event that keeps the people of Brazil glued
to their television sets. Documentary filmmaker Jose
Padilha uses the event as the jump off point to tell a
story that is even more far reaching in "Bus 174."

Jose Padilha builds an incredibly deft documentary of
that single day when a small-time criminal and former
street kid took it upon himself to hijack a public bus
in the hope that, somehow, he would escape the horror
and sorrow of his life. The young man, Sandro do
Nascimento, was born to the mean streets of Rio and
suffered the trauma of seeing his mother brutally
murdered when he was only six years old. With only an
aunt to watch out for him, he turns to the gangs on
the street for safety and support and begins a life of
crime in order to survive. Padilho tells Sandro's
story, intertwined with his last desperate act, in
such a way that you don't realize that two hours has
just gone by while watching "Bus 174."

The filmmaker benefits, greatly, from the absolute
avalanche of video footage of the hijacking. The TV
crews were all over the place with newscasters setting
up their cameras mere yards away from the bus. This
astounding and chilling footage is shown mostly in a
linear fashion as Padilho intersperses the images - of
Sandro waving his gun; forcing a hostage to take the
gun in her mouth before the horrified police; making
demands for hand grenades and a rifle; swearing that
he will start shooting hostages - with probing
interviews from the surviving hostages, law
enforcement officers, journalists and the family and
friends of Sandro.

"Bus 174" is much more than a chronicle of the events
that took place, with every television in the country
tuning in, on a public bus on a busy street in Rio.
Padilha uses this to begin an examination of Sandro,
his life and how he ended up in his horrific
predicament. He begins by bringing his camera high
over the beautiful city as the interviewees tell of
the despair of the homeless in that city and the tough
life lived by the street kids. Survival, finding
enough food and a safe place to sleep are a daily
struggle for a homeless kid. Even worse, these
children are considered fair game to anyone who
decides to rid society of its vermin. One woman, a
former street urchin, graphically describes how some
people sneak up on the children sleeping in alleys and
drop heavy paving stones on their heard. The documaker
also tells about the infamous massacre at Candelaria
where children were slaughtered, reportedly by the
police, punctuating the spoken words.

Padilha and his camera crew venture into the reform
schools and the prisons where the children end up
after police sweeps round them up. The law is quoted
that these kids are to be cared for and educated as
part of their reform. Instead, they are abused and
only learn more about a life of crime. As we come to
discover how a man like Sandro came to be, the drama
of his hostage taking and the bungling by the police
in controlling the situation unfold with dramatic
tension. The S.W.A.T. team sent to cover the situation
doesn't even have the simplest tools of a modern
police force - like radios. The team, led by Col.
Pendendo, is forced to communicate by hand signal and
shouts, adding to the growing list of ineptitude of
the officials' handling the crisis.

"Bus 174" culminates in the end of the hostage crisis.
The finale is as poorly handled by the police as their
actions were from the start of the day and it is a
bitterly sad, unnecessary conclusion. Jose Padilha
documents and explains, in many ways like Fernando
Meirelles did in his powerful examination of Rio's
street kids in "City of God," how a child could grow
to such a point of desperation and violence. In a year
of great documentaries, "Bus 174" is one of the best.
I give it an A.


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