Last Updated on October 18, 2020 by rob
Oscar (Jake Macapagal), his pretty wife Mai (Althea Vega), their nine year old daughter Angel (Erin Panlilio) and baby boy (Iasha Aceio) arrive in Metro Manila in the hope of a better life. When Oscar lucks into a job as security guard in an armoured van and Mai lands a job as hostess in a bar things begin to look up. But Oscar’s co-worker, Ong (John Arcilla) a grizzled ex-cop, has a plan to rip off the security company and intends to force Oscar into helping him.
One of the best movies of 2013, this poignant, gut-wrenching drama which its English director winningly describes as ‘a commercial film disguised as an art film’ is quite simply a first class character-driven thriller. We’re on Oscar’s side right from the opening scene in which the family’s labours as farmers are ruthlessly exploited with a pittance so small it won’t even pay for next year’s seed. Once the family arrive in the urban sprawl of metro Manila director Sean Ellis does a splendid job in juxtaposing the wide-eyed wonder of their young daughter Angel with the sordid realities around them. The overwhelming sense of poverty and the way Oscar – offered a free burger by his partner at work – immediately wraps it up to take home to his starving family – hits you hard. And the film is able to make you feel the family’s delight at moving into a crappy flat with a single rusty tap capable of producing a trickle of water is something truly wonderful. It is, as it were, a different scale of existence.
But from this promising start for Oscar and his family things go from bad to worse and then to hopeless over the course of the story but Oscar’s love for his family never wavers. It’s his bulwark against the violence and depravity around him. Ellis (who also served as cameraman on this micro-budget indie) shoots in a straightforward, observational style yet his editing conjures up striking, dreamlike juxtapositions such as the crosscutting between an unhappy Mai, all dolled up at work yet clearly thinking only of Oscar while the latter endures a lad’s night out with his workmates even as his wife and children are quite obviously the only thing on his mind. Along with the uniformly strong performances one of the rewards of Metro Manila is that unlike so many thrillers that have promising first and second acts but always seem to stumble in their third act this one doesn’t put a foot wrong. I won’t give it away suffice to say that as Ong’s plan goes disastrously awry and Oscar and his family find themselves utterly without hope the film offers up an ingenious twist the roots of which are so deeply embedded in Oscar’s character, in the kind of man he is, that his actions leave you floored.
