Bus 174

Reviewed by Lee Shoquist

for Reel Movie Critic

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Directed by Jose Padilha. A documentary. Not rated, contains violence and language. A ThinkFilm Release, in association with HBO/Cinemax. In Portuguese with English subtitles. Running time: 122 minutes.

The opening shots of "Bus 174," a new Brazilian documentary about a bus hijacking that became a media and police circus, ending in unnecessary tragedy, soar over the sea and Brazilian coast and countryside like a picture-perfect travel brochure. The story continues, moving closer into the heart of a downtrodden society, from which emerged a tragedy that became a microcosm for a societal breakdown of epic proportions.

The film is a well-researched investigatory piece about how a typical street kid, Sandro do Nascimento, hijacked a bus on June 12, 2000, in the middle of Rio's busy streets, and how the whole thing played out for almost five hours live on television. But there's much more to "Bus 174" than the dramatic events of the actual hijacking. It also digs deeply into the hijacker's life, exploring how an innocent kid, the product of social misfortune, turned to a life of petty crime because his society refused to allow him to exist with identity even on its periphery.

Director Jose Padilha works with a large canvas that includes lucid, intelligent interviews with hostages, media, and police. But what makes the film effective is that Padilha reaches out a compassionate hand to those who knew Sandro throughout his life - including poignant testimony from his aunt and an elderly woman he took as an adopted mother shortly before the incident.

"Bus 174" succeeds in creating a detailed portrait of a society that failed, time and again, to save a desperate young man who found himself at the dead end of optimism and zero opportunity. Every angle is explored, from Nascimento witnessing his mother's vicious slaying, corrupt and stinking prison conditions and keystone cops bumbling in critical moments.

The film weighs in at just over two hours, and there's not a frame here that feels wasted or bloated, and by the climax - where the crisis, depicted in real-time and close-up video footage - the suspense level is just about unbearable. The resolution of the hostage scenario is handled with an assured technical hand, but what happens to Nascimento just after is an unforgivable miscarriage of power, on par with his own failed coup.

So what happens here is not a simple dissection of an unfortunate event, rather, a comprehensive portrait of a society, and an individual, defeated by a collapsed social system rotted in poverty, corruption and lack of opportunity. That we sympathize with Nascimento by the end of the film says less about the film's liberal leanings and more about our ability to embrace a complete picture of a man driven to circumstances he had at least a partial hand in creating, which couldn't have been further from who he was - or could have been.