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"This ain’t no Hollywood movie," says the doped-up punk holding a bus hostage in this rough but riveting documentary by Brazilian filmmakers Felipe Lacerda and José Padilha. That’s for sure, but if it were, it would be more akin to Dog Day Afternoon than to Speed, with the culprit more sympathetic and scarcely more flawed than the system that’s seeking to apprehend him. On June 12, 2000, Sandro do Nascimento, who’d been living on the streets since he witnessed his mother’s brutal murder when he was five, found himself in a standoff with the police after a botched robbery of the title bus. News crews descended, and it was reality TV at its most intense as cameras followed the drama live throughout the day, Nascimento and his victims plainly visible, as if on stage, through the bus windows. Ponderously intercut with the archival footage are interviews with some of the participants — police, journalists, survivors, and family and acquaintances of Nascimento — as well as "experts" like the blowhard sociologist with a pet theory about social marginality and "invisibility." The story fascinates on many levels: as a study of urban corruption, as a look at the link between media and events, as a bizarre psychodrama between perpetrators and victim. But the filmmakers offer no point of view, and so Ônibus 174 comes off as an especially grim episode of Cops. In Portuguese with English subtitles. (133 minutes) All week at the Brattle.
BY PETER KEOUGH
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