In Bus 174, filmmakers Jose Padilha and Felipe Lacerda look at the gross inequities in Brazilian society and trace the history of Sandro himself, who, as a small child, witnessed his mother's murder. With her gone, there was no place else for him to go, and he wound up living on the streets of Rio. Then in 1993, in what came to be known as the Candelaria Massacre, city police slaughtered dozens of homeless street kids. Sandro survived the melee, but for years after was in and out of jail repeatedly.

Director Padilha tells the story of the Bus 174 incident in parallel fashion, cutting back and forth between news footage of the hostage crisis and the story of Sandro's life, effectively setting up the events that led to the predicament. The bus hijacking had millions of Brazilians for an audience, making it a media event (shades of Ace in the Hole or Man Bites Dog) and tying the hands of the police. Apparently the Rio police have a level of training on a par with American rent-a-cops, and several times the SWAT team snipers had a clear shot at the hijacker but declined to shoot with the news cameras present (even after a hostage was apparently killed). As the crisis drags on, the chances of it coming to any kind of good ending continue to dwindle, and its final resolution is completely botched in the most tragic way imaginable.

Padilha recounts much of the story in the form of interviews, including a sociologist who discusses the street kids' plight as "invisibility," a complete lack of recognition by the rest of society. Sandro certainly made himself visible, trading the rest of his life for a few hours in the public eye. Tellingly, he taunts police by screaming, "This isn't some action movie, this is some serious sh*t! I'm gonna turn the heat up!" Padilha goes into the appalling Brazilian jails and reformatories with his camera, and looks at the miseries of life for castaway street kids. It's an open secret in Brazil that urban police forces have death squads of officers who execute street kids, and the infamous Candelaria Massacre is only one of the more well-publicized incidents. Padilha also interviews a masked professional thief and several police officers (some of whom would only appear masked and with their voices altered), as well as Sandro's aunt and adopted "mom." It's obvious that the filmmakers have an agenda, but it's also obvious that Brazil has a severe problem that most middle-class citizens would rather sweep under the rug than deal with. It's a problem that most industrialized countries have, only it's magnified a hundredfold.

The DVD extras are rather scant, but the movie mostly speaks for itself anyway. Padilha is interviewed himself, explaining some of the difficulties that went into making the film and what his specific aims were. The professional thief and cop killer was an especially risky subject for interview, as you might imagine, and the filmmakers had to take certain precautions (such as electronic alarms for the editing room, or cutting the crew down to a minimum for certain interviews). With the help of a Rio detective, the director compiled 187 pages of documents from which he was able to reconstruct Sandro's life, and was able to trace Sandro's real family as well as his street-kid friends. Also included are additional interviews, which expand on some of the questions that the movie raises.

From its opening helicopter shots that go from downtown Rio to the shantytown slums, to the tragic ending of the hostage situation, Bus 174 is a compelling, brave and harrowing documentary. With no jobs, no education, and nowhere to turn, it's hard not to be moved by the plight of Sandro and his contemporaries. It can only be hoped that a movie like this can bring about change. In the tradition of American documentary filmmakers like Frederick Wiseman and Barbara Kopple, the directors turn an unflinching gaze on their society and force viewers to confront things they'd rather avoid.