Oscar Ramirez (Jake Macapagal) is a farmer in the Banue region of the Philippines, but life is hard there and the harvest of rice has been paltry, not leaving him enough money to either feed his family or buy seed to plant for the next year. Therefore he, his wife Mia (Althea Vega) and their two daughters, one just a baby, are forced to look further afield for any hope, travelling to the Filipino capital Manila to seek work as surely there is a better chance of making money in the city than there is in the country - Oscar reasons there must be more around, far more than where he came from. What he doesn't count on is that there may be riches in the capital, but those who have are not going to pass them on to those who have not...
Judging by his previous two feature length works, there were few signs filmmaker - writer, producer and director - Sean Ellis had a promising effort in so-called Third World cinema in him, but one trip to the Philippines later he had a bright idea of what would become his most acclaimed movie to date. Starting out as a state of the nation look at the extent of corruption in that Pacific state, it moved slickly into a tense thriller for its second half, paying off the carefully constructed character and scene-setting by offering Oscar a way out of his dire circumstances, but not without cost. So well-crafted was this that you could be forgiven for thinking it had been a bunch of locals who conjured this up.
But it wasn't, and you could accuse this of being an outsider's view of The Philippines only with the native population acting it out. But Ellis was immensely sympathetic to the place, therefore it may have shown it at its worst but that did not indicate almost everyone there was willing to cheat and steal to get by even if that's the way it looks. It was important to remember there were decent folks there, people like Oscar and his family, who did not resort to lawbreaking, it was just what Ellis depicted made it seem as if they were in the minority, which raised the stakes as far as drama went even if it was warning away anyone who might have wanted to visit the region: seriously, Metro Manila made its titular capital appear packed with crooks who were happy to rob both you and one another blind.
Jake Macapagal, heading an experienced cast, immersed himself in his role to the extent that you could easily think Ellis had plucked him off the streets to star in this, and that authenticity in performance was a great contribution to the overall mood when in the opening half we are being given a near-documentary lesson in what life consisted of for the poorest Filipinos. Oscar, after a few false starts, finds a job as a security guard escorting what turns out to be gangster's money across the city, but only because anyone in a position of power is some kind of gangster, according to what unfolds here. We are introduced to the film's real scene-stealer here, John Arcilla as Ong, Oscar's older partner in the security van who sees in him an opportunity.
To all appearances, since Ong lost his last partner thanks to a violent robbery, the more experienced guard wants to make sure this new boy will enjoy a longer career in a very dangerous profession than the last guy did, though if you've been paying attention you might well have misgivings about this being the best chance the likeable to a fault Oscar has for pulling through and saving his young family. In the meantime Mia has been forced to take a job as a bar hostess; she is supposed to have customers buying drinks all night without drinking anything herself and she may not actually go to bed with these slobbering men but we are well aware this is a demeaning occupation the innocent Mia is better off out of. By the point the thriller plot takes over from the social realism drama, you're sufficiently absorbed to go along with anything Ellis saw fit to throw at you, with a fairly clever twist or two awaiting the patient viewer. An all round good show, it may not have been a flattering portrait of The Philippines but it was one to make your heart go out to anyone suffering like this. Music by Robin Foster.
