Dely (Liza Lorena) is an elderly owner of a sisig restaurant in Pampanga who took fancy on Ramil (Allen Dizon), a younger blind man she asked directions from on the street. She took him and his young son Tristan (Ynigo Delen) under her wing. She trained Ramil as a cook (at which he excelled), and they lived as husband and wife, much to the dismay of Dely's daughter, Clara (Dimples Romana). On the baptismal party of Clara's youngest son, Dely was poisoned by one of the dishes Ramil prepared, and he was charged with the crime.
The crime tackled in this film was a relatively simple case of fatal food poisoning. Such are cases which could have been on detective or legal TV shows, like "SOCO" or "Ipaglaban Mo." There were court scenes where witnesses like the manager of the restaurant Aling Miling (Cecile Yumul), the harlot maid Doray (Ireen Cervantes), the loyal assistant Berting (Lowell Kip Conales), Clara's elder daughter Daisy (Nella Marie Dizon), and Clara herself pouring out their version of events. There was so much time spent on the fingerprint "expert," which did not exactly help anyone's case.
To give this one an aspect worthy of a big screen version, writer-director Ralston Jover introduces the character called Ramil 2, the invisible friend whom only the little boy Tristan could see. Ramil 2 was Tristan's idealized version of his father Ramil, hipper and not blind. Despite being supposedly a figment of a child's fertile imagination, Ramil 2 could seemingly intervene in the real world. I found this character more confounding than interesting.
The development of the story was quite straightforward, until we got hit by an improbable and illogical curve ball that came completely out of nowhere to provide the solution to the crime at hand. There were several reasons I could think of why it should NOT have come out at all this way. Granted it was a surprising and disturbing 11th hour twist in the story, its occurrence was practically a deus ex machina device to sort things out in a most melodramatic fashion in the end.
The lead actors Allen Dizon (as Ramil 1 and 2), Liza Lorena (as Dely) and Dimples Romana (as Clara) all did credible work, but clearly not really performing at their full abilities. Their acting work here was at telenovela levels at best, and in fact, I had seen them all do better work on TV than in this film. Child actor Inigo Delen was ok as Tristan, but still needs additional acting workshops. It was a surprise to see ex-"Flordeluna" child actress from the 1970s, Rosanna Jover (sister of director Ralston Jover), back on the big screen as Tristan's Japan-based mother Myrna.
The drab material and the way their characters were written limited the actors to what they can do. The pedestrian cinematography and choppy editing did not help enhance things. Of director Ralston Jover's previous works, I had seen "Hiblang Abo" and "Hamog," both of which were much better than this one. Just in last year's Sinag Maynila filmfest, Jover won Best Director for "Bomba." It is safe to predict he won't repeat that feat this year. 2/10.
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