****/****
directed by José Padilha
by Bill Chambers Bus 174 sums up its own trumping of the devious City of God with a quote from Sandro do Nascimento, the hostage-taker who becomes the focal point of this absorbing, even-handed documentary: "This ain't no American movie!" Presumed to be on a cocaine bender as he holds the passengers of a Rio city bus at gunpoint, his irrational demands amounting to more firearms (he asks police for "a rifle and a grenade"), Sandro is almost impossible for special forces to psychologically profile: he lets a student go to prevent him from being late for class but refuses to relinquish a woman in the throes of a stroke. Director José Padilha attempts to retrace the escalating misfortunes that led to Sandro's tragic June 12th, 2000 hijacking; the tranquility of those aerial vistas to which Padilha crosscuts underscores just how Brazil's street kids–among whom Sandro roamed–earned their nickname "The Invisibles," so deflective is the candy-coated surface of this tourist town. At once an overview of the crime-poverty cycle (Sandro's pregnant mother was murdered, orphaning him to the life responsible for her demise), a discomforting police procedural, and a re-sensitization to action-movie tropes, Bus 174 is one of the most thoughtful films of 2003, an incredibly sensitive account of a situation that should never have transpired and probably will again in some form, to be as fatalistic as the filmmakers about it. Programme: National Cinema Spotlight
