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.
Review of Bus 174
