Bus 174

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.

This film often does pull its viewer in different directions. At times you feel so angry at Sandro, but his background makes you consider the many facets of the society that breeds such street people. The massacre of the street kids was especially horrendous, and I think they give the event fair representation in this documentary. I think that the filmmakers tried very hard to remain unbiased while criticizing a government that does not always work. As a few people have mentioned, this is a very long documentary, but I personally think that it needs to be this long to do the story justice. Overall, it is very poignant and heart wrenching, but in the end it will make you reconsider the way that society isolates specific groups of people, and it may cause you to question the way you yourself profile people.

Bus 174 has to be one of the best documentary films I have seen in a long time. I recommend it to anyone that likes documentary or Portuguese films.

I watched for entertainment and information.

Trite, heavy-handed, and incoherent. This POS is almost two hours long, but there's only about 20 minutes worth of content here. Avoid.

While living in Rio I once asked my Marine Corps buddy Paul Y- why he thought Brazil never could get ahead. He pondered for a moment then said: "Brazil is the only country that respects sociologists." I didn't fully appreciate what he meant until I saw Bus 174, a film loaded with the blatherings of sociologists and social workers explaining the root causes of why SPOILER ALERT a glue-sniffing, cocaine-snorting, fugitive thief named Sandro shot and killed an innocent girl on a Rio bus in a botched holdup. Then I understood. When you've got a Constitution that says no one under 18 can be held criminally liable for anything (Article 228), you come to realize that you're in the grips of a sociological experiment gone horribly, horribly awry, that you're living in a nightmare of supremely stupid paternalistic sixties' utopianism, in a society with prescriptions for social problems wholly unconnected to reality or actual human behavior. Watch this film and you'll see this ethos in its full twisted glory, from a bogus examination of root causes, to dimestore Freudian psychology, to neo-Marxist analysis. Ironically, it's that last analysis that really has any traction. Poor kids got to eat too, and if they steal to get food, it's at least understandable (c.f. Prov. 6:30). When you steal to buy cocaine, however, then my compassion ends, as does the compassion of most people who are grounded in reality and common sense. In short, look for a lot of handwringing SPOILER ALERT about why a young man would go nuts and kill a hostage, interspersed with victim, relative and police testimonials that are interesting and sometimes informative. The incompetence of the police in the situation is staggering. They must have had 50 chances for a perfect head shot and never took it. What a disgrace for all concerned. SPOILER ALERT As for the fact that the cops who suffocated Sandro beat the rap, well that's why jury nullification was invented. Since we're on this same general subject, may I share a true confession with you? First, some background. I was an observer to the precursor to the Candelaria Massacre. Because I didn't have a car at the time, twice a week I walked from Ilha das Cobras through Praca Pio X (where the Candelaria Church is located) to get to the...well, to get to a building located on Av. Presidente Wilson. On July 23, 1993, I happened to be walking through Pio X in the afternoon and saw the commotion as the cops rounded up a bunch of kids while others taunted the cops and threw rocks at the patty wagon. That of course was the genesis of the cops' determination for payback later that night. My confession: before the massacre walking through Pio X scared the hell out of me because of all the street kids, one of whom I once saw stealing an old man's watch off his wrist. Walking through Pio X after the massacre, I never feared for my safety again. Infer from my confession what you will.

I find it hard to believe that the Brazil S.W.A.T. team had never before lost a hostage (only if every prior hostage- taker eventually surrendered would I believe that.) Instead of putting the lives of the hostages ahead of the criminal, they allowed him to fire two separate shots (including a long, well-aimed shot where they should have immediately acted.) Unfortunately, there was not a man or well-trained woman on the bus to disarm this jerk, as it would have been relatively easily by someone of equal strength or training. Extremely aggravating to watch S.W.A.T. fail to act. The end-result was just added tragedy to the fact that a decent S.W.A.T. team could have easily ended the event with a well-placed rifle shot when he had his head out the window (no danger of the heavy glass window deflecting the bullet) and with his gun also out the window and not to his hostage's head. Instead of crying about the bad guy's past, I would have liked to know how and when he got the gun, how many prior crimes he committed with it, the life, hopes and dreams of the innocent women on the bus, .i.e. less attempt to make the bad guy a folk hero. And Liberals want to have us totally depend on Law Enforcement for our safety!

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.

This is a sad and true documentary,basically you find out what lead this man or lost child to do what he did.Indoing so it shows you how currupt and dirty the brazilian cops are,you treat someone like a chaged dog with violence then expect them to be normal and a good citizen,basically all they know is hate for the cops and violence.Brazil is a very currupt country and sandro is one of many.

Compré el documental porque me encantaron las películas del mismo director, tropa de élite uno y dos, de José Padilla. Este documental está en versión original subtitulado en inglés, es magnífico.

“I watched this documentary (movie) with great astonishment about a society that rest it’s morals on greed and corruption, the invisible kids of a society that want no part of them, who would rather kill them than deal with them, Bus 174” tells the story of “Sandro Do Nascimento” who at a young age, watched three men stab his mother and almost decapitated her, this is real life folks, there is no movie here, this woman had her own business and was killed for it, how would you like to witness that as a kid, Then to be one of the survivors of the worst massacre in Brazilian History, where about nine kids or more were killed because there were a nuisance to society, sometimes I think if we’re really loved, or it’s all a sham, we feel pain, but who gives us that pain, I don’t know if you want the answer to that one??? “Sad. Very Sad”

Just a highlight: that's not the Bus 174 movie. That's the documentary. Yeah, I did a mistake. Nevertheless, it is an outstanding documentary, which shows very well the reality in Brazilian society. And that's a Brazilian review:)

this was live! The situation went completely out of control