Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Charming and brutal

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The movie is about the awful "policing", by the so-called police in Rio De Janeiro on this horrid day and night. The inept sniper is the guy who lost the woman's life. Making the attempt to shoot the maniac at that moment was beyond stupid when for HOURS the maniac seemed to almost offer himself as a target in all manner of positions inside the bus. Frustrating to say the least, because if there's one theme here--and for me it isn't the "explanation" and justification of Sandro's motives for doing this crazy crime, not the social precedents set by a life of abuse and poverty, it is the profound incompetence of the Rio police, in a third-world country pretending to live by the "rule of law".

This is a commendable, compelling Brazilian Documentary about a kidnap stand off with the police, when a man takes a hostage at gunpoint on a bus. It is 2 hours long and works both as a documentary and drama-esque film.In 2000, Sandro di Nascimento is probably high off drugs and ends up taking hostages on a Bus in Rio, Brazil. This stand-off with surrounding police lasts all evening, as he threatens to kill passengers at 6pm. TV crews and untrained police forces swarm around the vehicle, waiting for developments and their chance to intervene. All of the TV footage is used, mixing it in with an interesting and shocking history on Sandro's past, living as an orphaned street child in Rio amongst poverty and crime. 35 Million viewers watched this shocking scene as the hijack hostage situation was broadcast live.This award winning documentary film, uncut for DVD release, is over 2 hours long and so can get a bit testing, but it is a commendable insight into Brazil and the shocking events that occurred there in 2000. The ending and story is also shocking and makes the piece of film powerful and poignant.

This documentary stood out for me from others of its ilk, because it focuses not just on what happened on a bus one summer day in Brazil, but also reaches into the socioeconomic situation at the time and gives us a real glimpse of why a young man would be driven to take people hostage, and how he felt he had no other options outside of a life of crime.Watching "Bus 174" is like observing a criminal event through a prism. There are countless sides to every element of it. The beauty of Rio de Janeiro is juxtaposed on screen with the horrors as we're taken through the escalation of a hostage situation, all graphically captured by Brazilian TV camera crews. We can see how wide the gulf is between the rich and the poor, even though the lives of each are lived only miles apart in the same city. We are told how inadequately the police force has been trained and equipped to deal with the crime in the city, let alone such a volatile situation. And we're shown how a single bus stopped on a busy thru-way brings an entire city to a screeching halt. With the rich context given to us by the filmmakers, we find ourselves sympathizing with the gunman (Sandro do Nascimento) *and* his hostages. And while we now know how badly it will end, we can't help but hope that somehow Sadro's surrender will be accepted, that he and all of the hostages will make it out unscathed, that history can be rewritten. Tragically, it cannot, and we are shown the moments when lives are lost. We're also left to contemplate how many ways this could have ended differently, and how little it may have taken to do so.Interviews with everyone, from survivors to police personnel to reporters on the scene, as well as people who knew Sandro during his horrific childhood, are very effective in making us feel as though we too were there during that harrowing 4-hour long encounter. Learning about the gunman's tragic history - what he had to survive to reach even the young age he had when this incident ended his life - and how, in the aftermath, police scrambled to re-frame the incident in their favour, add to the viewer's internal conflict. We're not accustomed to experiencing such empathy for both hostage-taker and victim. That is a major strength of this film: we're allowed to see it from all sides, which makes it that much more heartbreaking in the end.This is not for the faint of heart. We're not spared much. But "Bus 174" is a documentary after which others should strive to model themselves. It is truly a must-see, as it comes as close as anything possibly can to answering what we always ask after a tragedy: "Why?"

Bus 174 is a documentary based on the hold up of a bus by a young man named Yvonne Bezerra De Mello in Rio De Janeiro in the year 2000.This is a shocking but truthful story of a young man with a troubled life. Bus 174 was a very well shot and organised documentary, although violent and crude, very well done. It was a very real feeling while watching it.Real footage was used for the majority of the documentary other parts are fictionalPros Realistic, Well filmed.Cons none