On June 21, 2000, a homeless man named Sandro Do Nascimento boarded a commuter bus in Rio de Janeiro to rob some passengers and ended up hijacking the bus and taking the passengers as hostages. Police negotiators and SWAT team snipers surrounded the bus while reporters and onlookers watched the standoff unfold before their eyes for four hours. Director Jose Padilha uses video taken for Brazilian television along with accounts by the police, victims, witnesses, sociologists, social workers, and family and friends of the hijacker...[while] less sophisticated filmmakers would have just stuck with the crime and the commentary of law and order officials, Padilha uses the tragedy as an opportunity to examine poverty and the plight of street people in Rio de Janeiro.
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