Bus 174

 3/4

Rated R for Language, Violent Images and Some Drug Material

We don't get to choose how we start in this life.  Real "greatness" is what you do with the hand you're dealt. -Victor Sullivan, "Uncharted: Drake's Fortune" 

I realize just how odd it is for me to open a review of a documentary by quoting a character from a video game, but under the circumstances it's more apropos than Shakespeare.  After all, this movie is about a man who had been dealt the worst possible hand by life and unfortunately decided to lash out in anger and frustration.

June 12, 2000.  Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  Sandro do Nascimento gets onto Bus 174 and pulls out a gun.  This isn't an ordinary stick up.  Nascimento takes hostages, and together with the woefully inept police response it turns into a disaster.

With this documentary, director Jose Padilha does two things.  First and foremost, he uses archive footage and interviews to create a play by play guide through the events of the crisis.  Second, he explores Nascimento's live up until the incident.  While it is an imperfect marriage (this is not the most professional documentary), it is fascinating and frequently intense.

What's especially intriguing about the footage from the incident is just how good it is.  The Brazilian police were poorly trained and barely tried to create order around the bus.  That allowed news footage into the bus and the bumbling efforts of the police to be captured.  It creates a level of intimacy not available to most crime documentaries (at least ones of older crimes...this event took place well before the advent of the smartphone).

Less successful are Padilha's attempts to explore the forces that drove Nascimento to his act of violence.  It's not that he excuses the man's actions (in fact, Padilha goes out of his way to do just the opposite).  It's that he doesn't find a way to successfully convey his thesis.  The cruel mistreatment of street children (Nascimento was one of them) and the horrors of the prison system (and you thought ours was bad) are illustrated vividly and without anything held back.  But the picture he paints of the man is frustratingly incomplete.  We don't know what drives him to his horrific actions.  All he does is claim that, as inexcusable as his actions were, Nascimento was a victim too.

At two hours, "Bus 174" is too long.  It sounds strange saying this but there is too much footage of what happens on the bus.  It gets a bit repetitive.  More judicious cutting would have kept the energy and suspense level high.  More time should have been spent on Nascimento's life.  Padilha has a lot he wants to say, but the impact is muted because he doesn't fully flesh out the man at the center of it all.  We know what he does but not why.  For example, after escaping from a hellish prison, he meets a woman who would become a mother figure to him.  Her presence is not explained whatsoever.  Any information explaining how they met or how they developed their relationship is missing.

"Bus 174" holds the power of a true crime drama.  It's intense and not always easy to watch.  Nor should it be.  But what it does, it does extremely well.