Ka Paeng was the legendary thief of Barangay Husay who now ran the local robbery syndicate. His son Eman led his own team with his two partners in crime, namely the tall dark Toto and the pudgy bald Carlo. All three friends were inept and idiotic at their trade of thievery, making them the worst performing team in Ka Paeng's gang.
They were so bad at what they do that Paeng gave them a new member Nicoy, which Eman resented but had no choice but accept. One day, they got wind of a heist which could possibly net them a cool one million pesos. Eman was sure that this was the chance he was waiting for that would finally give his team the respect they longed for, or would it?
Despite the shady trade that their characters plied, Pepe Herrera, Jerold Napoles and Jelson Bay were a lot of fun to watch as they portrayed the bumbling trio of Eman, Toto and Carlo, respectively. Some of their shameless antics may already be flirting with the groan level, but they never crossed over to being annoying because you knew that they were not really bad people, just severely misguided.
I was surprised at some of the gross out scenes that Paolo Contis agreed to do as new wannabe crook Nicoy. These were definitely on a different level of comedy than those he had to do in his last film "Through Night and Day." Kate Alejandrino played Marga, the prostitute who clued everyone about the P1M payoff about to go down. She first made a good impression in "Respeto," and is now building up her indie film cred with marked supporting roles, reminding me of a young Mercedes Cabral.
As always, Pen Medina was the coolest cat on the block as crime boss Ka Paeng, so effortless with his screen presence. Gary Lim played Paeng's trusty right-hand man Onyok and Rino Marco was Balot, his best young operative. Raffy Tejada played Paeng's paranoid rival kingpin Badjao, with Dindo Arroyo playing his formidable executioner Roy Bulag, who owned a spoon that gave him his scary nickname.
Various lesser-known character actors played smaller roles that nevertheless added to the weblike comedy of errors that this film was spinning. Boy Liquipo played the sleazy businessman Mr. Santos, while Bernard Carritero played Cholo, his desperate driver deep in debt. The ubiquitous Erlinda Villalobos was also there playing Cholo's sick mother. Raul Morit played Tunying, the elderly farmer who found the golden artifact fashioned from an appendage of Datu Puti everyone was after.
This film written and directed by Marius Talampas (his debut effort) attracted attention when theaters at first refused to screen it because of its provocative title which seemed to encourage a life of crime. Upon watching, it was a light-hearted black comedy caper which never really glorified these petty crimes as much as it made fun of its perpetrators. It was a mixed bag of brown, green and other off-color crude humor meant to shock (some), offend (some) and ultimately entertain (all). Such a riotous laugh trip this was. 7/10.
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