dusan-22
Very well done, more than convincing. Rio shown with no softeners as a place where life doesn't worth much. This is just one more of the Brazilian 'reality' movies which sends any Hollywood crime story to kindergarten. 'Good' thing about Hollywood work is that you go and sleep after watching a movie but this Brazilian film reality is so convincing that really shocks you and stays after the film. That is the difference between being entertained and being moved. Thumbs up for that considering the fact that we do not watch a documentary while the movie is made real as one. Excellent portrait of the society and its structural relations. Superb acting and very good directing.
Chris_Docker
The number 174 bus may well forever be remembered as the most famous hi-jack in Brasil. National television gave it hours of live coverage. Rio de Janeiro police desperately tried to free hostages. The ordeal was imprinted on the national psyche, much the way 9/11 is on America's. First a documentary, and now this major film.I did once experience an attempted hi-jack in Brasil. Coming off a slip road from Presidente Vargas. The same freeway where part of this film is located. About twenty young kids, none of them more than twelve years old, charge our fast-moving vehicle. They run head-on towards us in a v-formation, attempting to make the bus brake hard. Or crash. It's 2am. I'm on my way back to the apartment after late night carousing. Passengers rise in their seats. Transfixed. We wait to see what the driver will do. Instead of stopping, he accelerates towards the children. It resembles a game of dare, but with deadly intent. The phalanx of charging youngsters scatters at the very last minute. Sighs of relief. If he had stopped, the chances of being robbed at gunpoint would have been high.The famous 174 incident ended in bloodshed. It was made into the documentary, Onibus 174, which did rather well, and also inspired this film. Last Stop 174, a feature thriller that culminates in the same event, has much to live up to.Our action starts with Alessandro, rudely ripped from his mother's breast (quite literally). The gangsters that grab him violently are owed money by his coke-sniffing mama. Young Alessandro (Sandro for short) is soon old enough to wield a gun. His life soon intertwines with another boy called Sandro as they grow up on the streets, doing coke and doing time. They survive by armed robbery and dealing drugs. A close shave with an infamous street massacre, just off Presidente Vargas (in Rio's city centre), sees several children gunned down. Between the bloodbath of juveniles and the bus hi-jack, weave tales of maternal longing, desperate glue-sniffing, jailbreak and prostitution. Meanwhile, Church and NGOs fight to save souls among such unworthy miscreants.As a straightforward action movie, Last Stop 174 is gritty and entertaining. The pace doesn't let up, and the central characters give a convincing demonstration of Brasil's brand of smooth-talking hustlers. But does the film have more to it than just box office returns? Our young actors do well - on many an occasion - but at other times seem noticeably stretched. It seems a good enough story; yet is really a collection of interlocking pieces rather than a smoothly flowing whole. The actual hijack is a relatively short segment at the end of the film - and it left me a little underwhelmed. I had been very much looking forward to Last Stop 174. Yet on viewing, I felt it had little new to say. In fact, very little to say at all. Additionally, my sympathies are moving towards some of the more art-house –type directors from Brasil. Ones that deplore the way their multifaceted country is depicted as a violent, third-world outback.You could imagine the anger if the bulk of mainstream film from the UK, for instance, portrayed nothing but Trainspotting and underbellies of drug orgies and football violence. The Rio city centre carnage should be shocking - since such things normally only happen, when they do happen, in underprivileged favelas, the slums of Brasil. Not in the midst of a teeming financial district. But this film sadly gives us no context to draw such contrasts. We see mostly only slum boys, sleeping on pavements and selling their heavily-cut coke. Characters outside their world of the dispossessed have little more than walk-on parts.The plot is overcomplicated by having two boys of similar names. And there is confusion rather than mystery over who is the real mother. The mishmash result is lack of momentum for the main storyline. This should be Sandro's boyhood, culminating in a botched robbery and hijack of bus 174.Not that there aren't fascinating details. Con-tricks used to steal a Copacabana woman's handbag. Or an ingenious ruse for the mass egress from prison, when they scam and overpower guards and staff. Earlier, Sandro loses his virginity at a tender age. To a prostitute he promptly falls in love with. Patchy performances of inspired intensity outweigh an attempt at a sustained ensemble endeavour. From the opening scenes (which have genuine shock value), the drive towards a finale is uneven at best. The film's target audience is unclear, being too well-trodden for many mainstream viewers and lacking the subtlety demanded by art-house crowds. Last Stop 174, if not quite grinding to a halt, never manages to make a smooth transition through its gears.
Nuno Lopes
This all story took place in south of Rio Janeiro, Brazil, and show us the sequence of events that took place in the Sandro's life, a poor 22 years old boy that hijacks Bus 174 and takes few hostages on June 12, 2000. Another good (horrible) but true portrait of living in a country well known by its social differences. Sandro was just another "invisible" boy taken by the poverty, the drugs, fear and violence that surround him and gives to him no opportunity and no choice but being a thief. I enjoying see this movie, direction and actors did a good work. You don't expect a film about the hijack but a film about the depressive but true Brazilian reality. If you enjoy City of Men or Elite Squad, Last Stop 174 is one of the kind, and you can't lose it.
Marco Aurelio
A chronicle of a bus hijacking in Rio, Brazil so as the kid life. It occurred on June 12,2000. Just watched this movie here in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. It is about a poor boy (Sandro) who hijacks a bus and takes few hostages only in order to be famous and due he's high. So everyone must watch it. It's a portrait about an unfortunate guy who didn't have another choice in life except being a thief. Otherwise, he'd die. In other words, he didn't have a chance to live honestly. The movie has the usual and expected sad ending. Michel Gomes is the main actor who did a great work, besides some of other unknown actors. Maybe it could be a good lesson for those who intends to track a wrong way. As a matter of fact, Sandro had tried to have a better life but it seems destiny or fate did not allow him. In short, it happens nowadays in every country where poverty turns to a plague. Again: good direction and good actors. I'm sure an awarding is coming to this very film!
