70
Padilha allows neither easy answers nor ironic commentary, producing on both sides of the conflict a world of inconsolable grief.
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What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
80
The New York Times by Dana Stevens
So wrenching and absorbing that you can easily lose sight of the sophistication of its techniques.
50
A tense documentary with multiple layers of meaning.
88
New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman
It is to Padilha's enormous credit that he steadfastly kicks aside our own culturally imposed frames of reference, insisting that we see the truth, and the humanity, within this very real story.
100
Tense, engrossing, and superbly structured, Bus 174 is not just unforgettable drama but a skillfully developed argument.
83
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
Although it shares a bitter interest in slum desperation with last year's Brazilian-underbelly docudrama ''City of God,'' Bus 174 pulls ahead, I think, by not confusing cinematic pizzazz with the content of misery.
70
An amazingly powerful piece of cinema. Actually, it's more an amazingly powerful piece of news journalism; the kind of in-depth stories told in all their complexity that such fluff American network "news" magazines as "Dateline" could only dream about telling.
90
Edited with an impeccable sense of timing and rhythm, with each new revelation and insight planted at just the right moment, Bus 174 examines an already gripping story from a moving and untold perspective.
75
The drivel they call "reality TV" pales in comparison with the gripping big-screen documentary Bus 174.