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Review by: Graeme Kay | Rating:
Two
DVD SPECIAL FEATURES: Making of. Interview with director
José Padilha; Additional interviews with sociologist Luiz
Eduardo Soares, social worker Yvonne Bezerra, Julieta do Nascimento
(Sandro do Nascimento's maternal aunt) and an anonymous professional
robber; Assistant director Alexandre Lima's Social Frontiers Photography
Exhibition; Trailer; Previews of other Metrodome releases; Scene
selection.
LIKE The Agronomist, which
came out a couple of weeks ago, this is another fine documentary,
but this time the subject is a poor boy from the favelahs of Rio,
rather than a crusading journalist from Haiti.
Bus 174 is actual footage of the events that ensued when, on
June 12, 2000, a teenage street-kid, Sandro, decided to hijack
a bus and hold its passengers hostage for four and a half hours
- all of which was captured on TV.
The facts behind the film are familiar ones for anyone familiar
with life among the underclasses of Latin America.
Sandro, orphaned when his mother was brutally murdered before
his eyes, had been living rough since his early teens and had
become part of a gang of homeless kids, who lived in the area
around a church in the centre of Rio de Janeiro.
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These children had become his family,
and so when some of them were brutally murdered by the police,
Sandro took out his anger and frustration on the general public.
He took over the bus and used the siege that followed to publicise
the fate of his former friends.
Around the TV footage, director Jose Padhila uses interviews
with some of Sandro's former friends and family, to describe the
brutal chain of events that had driven Sandro to take such desperate
action.
Some of the interviewees speak affectionately of Sandro, and
tell of his ambition to leave the streets behind and lead a normal
life, even
though, being illiterate, he had little real hope of doing so.
Others boast of their own violent past and applaud Sandro's
actions, saying that for them, whose own lives are considered
worthless by the authorities, there was no question of feeling
pity for the plight of the hostages.
Running parallel, we hear testimony from police officers involved
in the siege, who say that the whole thing was terribly mis-handled
by the government who, knowing that the siege was taking place
in front of the eyes of the world, and keen to avoid anything
that smacked of brutality, told the police to hold off attacking
the bus and 'taking out' Sandro, even though they had plenty of
chances to do so.
The end result is a fascinating, riveting insight into the workings
of a society, where human life is cheap and the police can literally
get away
with murder, because no one has the nerve to take them on.
Go watch this film, and the next time you feel like you're having
a hard day, think about what millions of people, like Sandro,
have to live through every minute of their lives.
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