O ASSALTO AO TREM PAGADOR

On a June day in 1960, a train containing the payrolls of the Central do Brasil Railroad is attacked. The band of robbers is headed by Tião Medonho and Grillo Peru. Its other members are Tonho, Edgar, Lino and Cachaça. While they attack the train armed with machine guns, they kill a man, an official of the railroad. They then divide the twenty-seven-million-cruzeiro loot and promise each other that they will not spend more than ten percent of the money that they robbed over a certain period of time, so that they would not arouse suspicion. The police grope around in the dark because they think that they are dealing with a band of international professional thieves and not a bunch of desperate Brazilians. And this is the reason that things end up badly for everybody.

"Grillo thus has one foot in the favela and one in upright society. When the favelados learn that Grillo tricked them and took advantage of them, they kill him. It is a violent reaction. It is an attempt at liberation. Roberto Farias also kill Grillo because his aspirations are not directed at the middle class, but at high society. The marginal person (marginal) finds that it is impossibie for him to make his dream of integration concrete. Roberto Farias tries to overcome the impasse that he finds his character in by tratisforming him into a hero […]. The 'marginal' who turned into a hero could not help but die at the end of the film. His death is the extinction of a force of nature. Tião Medonho tears off the bandages that cover his chest and his great black body. He dies breathing heavily and painfully. The mate thief, hit by various bullets, dies in the countryside with all the emphasis that the circumstances require." (Jean-Claude Bernadet)

Director and screenplay: Roberto Farias.
Plot: Luiz Carlos Barreto, Roberto Farias con la collaborazione di Alinor Azevedo.
Director of photography: Amleto Daissé.
Art director: Alexandre Horvath, Pierino Massenzi.
Editor: Rafael Justo Valverde.
Music: Remo Usai.
Cast and characters: Eliezer Gomes (Tiao Medoho), Luiza Maranhão, Reginaldo Farla (Grillo), Ruth de Souza, Grande Otelo, Atila lorio, Miguel Rosenberg, Helena Ignéz, Miguel Angelo, Jorge Dória, Dirce Migliaccio, Oswaldo Louzada, Wilson Grey.
Production company: Herbert Richerts, Roberto Farias.