AllMovie

The tragic events that informed José Padilha's 2003 documentary Bus 174 serve as the inspiration for this docudrama detailing the events that unfolded when, on the morning of June 12, 2000, the passengers on a bus traveling through the wealthy Rio de Janeiro district of Jardim Botânico were taken hostage by a disturbed young man who had been abandoned by society. Marisa (Cris Vianna) is a drug addict whose baby, Alessandro, was taken from her by drug dealers after she failed to pay a lingering debt. Later, after becoming sober, Marisa becomes obsessed with finding her son and begins searching the local juvenile detention homes. Meanwhile, on the outskirts of Rio, a young boy named Sandro wanders into his mother's shop to find her lifeless body riddled with knife wounds. Wistfully recalling his mother's promises to take him to Copacabana, the grieving boy runs away, ultimately falling in with a group of street kids and becoming addicted to drugs. Later, Sandro somehow manages to survive the notorious Candelária massacre (in which Rio police attempted to thwart crime by murdering street kids in their sleep), only to be locked away in a juvenile detention center. It's there that Sandro meets Alessandro. When Marisa arrives at the center in search of her son, she mistakes Sandro for Alessandro and tenderly takes the troubled boy under her wing. But Sandro's scars run deeper than Marisa could ever imagine, so deep that he believes his only hope for survival is taking a busload of hostages.