SnoopyStyle
It's June 12, 2000, Rio de Janeiro. Street kid Sandro do Nascimento takes a bus full of passengers hostage. The SWAT team arrives followed closely by the media. It becomes a day-long ordeal as it gets broadcast live on TV. Sandro is high on drugs and eventually takes one of his hostage with him. The police attempts to kill him but it ends with both Sandro and hostage dead. Sandro had witnessed his mother's gruesome murder at the age of 6 and became a street kid. The doc also shows the problems he and other kids faced from the police and the invisibility of their existence. This is a tough documentary. It's unflinching in the street life and even the final deaths in the hostage drama. The production is not necessarily that slick. The drama is in the story.
Ben Larson
The situation is just a small step from exploding. The hostage taker is a street kid who is 19, and has been living on the streets for 13 years. The police are people who cannot find a job. They are poorly trained, poorly armed, and not respected.As events unfold on the bus, we visit children in the area to see how they live - no home, no food, no blankets. Ignored and abused, they have no choice but crime to get money for food. No one seems to care. In fact, a radio survey shows that most people want to "kill the kids and clean the city."The jail situation is so bad that prisoners say they would rather be dead. How are you going to get someone to give up the hostages when he knows what is awaiting him.It ends badly.
Matt Bancroft
Why was a film made about someone who shouldn't have been on the bus, in a district he did not belong, take a woman's life who had a child then when he himself gets shot and killed the Policeman who shot him has to appear in court? It seems as though because he was poor he is alleviated from all his civil responsibilities...is the same old " don't blame him, blame society" nonsense...a truly boring film that doesn't deserve the time of day and on a subject of a man who was nothing more than a piece of rubbish..the police were doing their job and in my opinion did the right thing. No point keeping someone like that in jail only for the state to upkeep him
Claudio Carvalho
On June 12th, 2000, the bus 174 is hijacked on the afternoon by a thief former street boy. The event is broadcast by TV, and ends in a tragic way due to the the stupid action of the police force, not prepared for such situation. Yesterday I saw this DVD, relative to a day that I wish I could erase from my mind, certainly one of the saddest day in the wonderful city of Rio de Janeiro. The documentary shows what happened, but I did not like its edition. The director José Padilha was concerned in showing the profile of Sandro in the middle of the hijack, breaking the tension and not transmitting to the overseas viewers the reality of that specific of the moment.Sandro threatened the passengers, most of them young women, with his gun, but in that moment nobody knew who he was. We only kept seeing that man on TV, with persons that could be our relatives or friends, putting the gun on their heads and simulating that one girl was shot. I remember I cried, and if I had the power of killing a human being, I would certainly hit that human-shaped animal. Therefore, the unprepared SWAT (BOPE) policeman who shot the victim probably was so upset with the situation as most of the Brazilian population, and I believe most of the viewers mentally pulled the trigger of his gun with him. The problem is, he used a "huge" gun instead of a pistol for such assault , and he was disturbed, so he killed the victim, instead of the criminal.Later, we became aware that Sandro was a victim of our society as brilliantly showed in the documentary, but unfortunately it does not give any sympathy for him or for what he did.With regard to the jails in Rio de Janeiro, this is the reflex of a country that pays less than US$ 100,00 (one hundred dollars) per month to a worker, and has a huge reserve army looking for a job. Can you imagine how is the "house" in the slum of such a hard worker? So the jail shall really look like a hell, otherwise most of our population would try to move to there to have a better housing.In the Extras of the DVD, there is an interview with a hypocrite sociologist, who uses beautiful words and sayings, but who does not walk the way he talks. This guy omitted that he was a big-shot ("Chief of Police" or something equivalent) in the State Police Force of "the governor who was disputing the election to president", and he did not improve anything in the police force. The social problems happen not only in Brazil, but in most of the Third World countries, and a great part is caused by the exploitation of the rich countries since our "discovery", draining our savings, which should be used for improving the life of our citizens, in external debts easily contracted by corrupt governors and impossible to be paid. With regard to the theme "invisibility and changes in the society", this sociologist moved with his family to the United States, so he resolved his life in the easiest way. Unfortunately, my family, my friends and I have to live with the mentioned problem, and the way we have to try to improve life in Brazil is trying to elect better politicians. But unfortunately, power corrupts, and even when we hopefully elect a former worker expecting better changes, the president does not respect his campaign promises and uses only demagogy and propaganda, as a good reader of Machiavelli's "The Prince". I do not like writing long reviews, so sorry for releasing these things off my chest, but our situation is much more complicated and complex than exposed in the imbecile worldwide interview of this sociologist. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "Onibus 174" ("Bus 174")
