It is already the final day of the Cinemalaya filmfest 2018. I was only able to watch 3 out of the 10 feature films in competition, not a good record for me this year. I went to the mall to try to catch one more film before the awards were given tonight. When I arrived at the ticket booth, I was hoping I'd get to see "Distance" or "ML," but unfortunately that was not the case. I was stuck with watching this much maligned entry, which was almost consistently at the bottom of everyone's lists.
Merlin Limotog (Yayo Aguila) was a battered wife who was forced by her sadistic common-law partner Kardo (Alvin Fortuna) to sell her kids George and Grace to a child trafficking syndicate. The two kids were separated. George grew up beaten up, molested and trained to be a killer by professional assassin Timothy Solis Jr. (Rez Cortez). George vowed to look for her sister and to seek revenge.
George grew up to be a homosexual, and a ruthless assassin, with code name Lester Quiambao (Andres Vasquez). He went to the exclusive membership club called The Kingdom to pick out and buy a man he intended to be his escort, lover and lookout on the job. He chose Travis Concepcion (Jay Garcia), who, after initial reluctance, eventually relented despite his claim that he was straight, and settled into his new life.
Meanwhile, the NBI under director Renato Mullon (Efren Reyes, Jr.) and his inept operatives led by Monica Vera (Elle Ramirez) were having a very hard time trying to locate Lester to stop his killings. However, things were really not what they seem to be on the surface. All these characters were all inter-related with each other in one convoluted complex web.
Lead actor Andres Vasquez is good-looking and well-built, with strong screen presence as Lester. He is not ashamed to appear on the big screen in various states of undress, nor was he averse to having love scenes with a fellow man. He shows promise to be lead actor.
On the other hand, his screen partner Jay Garcia also bared his body and had love scenes, but he could not match Vasquez in terms of screen presence. In fact, Garcia even tended to act effeminately, which was wrong for his character Travis.
Yayo Aguila was totally committed to her masochistic character who inexplicably stuck with the same monster of a live-in partner for over 20 years even if he hit her like crazy, blinded her, raped her and sold her kids away. Perpetual rapist in many films in the past, Rez Cortez finally gets his comeuppance as Timothy gets sodomized in a very brutal scene with two male rapists. Efren Reyes Jr. was as wooden as ever as the NBI director. As Monica, Elle Ramirez gave a hysterically bad, unrealistic portrayal of a NBI agent Monica.
On paper, the tangled up story of writer-director Afi Africa could have been a fascinating character study. However, during the execution of the scenes, something went seriously wrong. The script had plenty of very corny lines. The memorably cheesy ones should be that one that says that the meaning of "mahalaga" ("mahal" + "alaga") or the difference between "I love you" and "Mahal kita" (the former comes from the heart, the latter comes from the heart AND soul.) Groan.
Despite the slick-looking cinematography, but the production design was so ugly and careless. The film editing was so choppy, with some scenes obviously missing, causing some scenes to seem puzzling. The non-linear arrangement of the scenes made the storytelling frustratingly confusing There were several scenes of explicitly sexual nature which felt exploitatory and unnecessary, there just to thrill specific types of audiences.
Now, despite all its rape scenes, sodomy scenes, male sex scenes, crisp profanity and vulgar sexually frank dialog, this film was actually rated PG by the MTRCB! How did that happen? If this was a big mistake, I am surprised no one has reported it to the MTRCB yet because it was still rated PG up to its very last day. 2/10.
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