Bus 174

Documentary. In 2000 in Brazil a man took over a bus after a robbery went wrong. For most of the day he held 10 hostages as crowds swirled around, completely uncontrolled by the police, whose ineptitude is astonishing. All this was covered live by every TV station in Rio. The movie shows all this, and the conditions that produced this poor, confused, drug-addled young man, who saw his mother murdered at the age of 6 and spent the rest of his life living on Rio’s mean streets … and if you think you’ve seen mean streets in America, you haven’t seen anything. The third world is absolutely jammed with forgotten people like this, and corrupt and overworked institutions are utterly failing them. There seems to be no hope. A sobering movie, maybe a bit long at 120 minutes, but I recommend it.