The heist-film genre is dirtied up with a hectic neorealist, class-based grit in Roberto Farias's first major work, shot in the streets and on the run in chaotically vibrant Rio de Janeiro. Six men bound together by poverty and desperation ambush a pay train, but cannot spend their sudden wealth until suspicion passes. Carelessness, greed, and deceit all threaten the heist's success, but the true barrier, Farias implies, remains Brazil's immovable class and racial hierarchy, where the poor, no matter their hidden wealth, remain doomed to die in shacks and sheds. The film's unpolished technique and periodically amateurish acting, combined with the sheer raw energy of Farias's vision, helped create one of the first realized embodiments of Cinema Nôvo's filmic street theater and its desire to, as Carlos Diegues stated, "give human form to fundamental conflicts, to make the people the center and master of the cinematic instrument."-J. Sanders