Ruthless assassin Luciana was hired by crime lord Franco (Jay Manalo) to kill an old man (Rodolfo Muyuela) who found a valuable diamond. After finishing him off and securing the gem, Luciana also took home with her the young girl Lourdes who was riding the old man's jeep. One day, Franco suspected Luciana of double-crossing him and ordered his men to execute her. Luciana was not going to be that easy to kill.
This film had just won three awards in the recently concluded Pista ng Peilikulang Pilipino 2019. Its biggest prize is that of Best Director for Tyrone Acierto. Being a US-educated and US-based filmmaker, Acierto was able to recruit American film colleagues to work with him in "Watch Me Kill." Two of them (Marcin Ski and Colorado Rutledge) likewise went home with awards for Best Cinematography and Best Film Editing respectively.
It was interesting to see how their American sensibilities told a Filipino story. The entire sequence of that old man and his search for that diamond in a desolate location played like an American Western in its look and feel. That vibe continued when Luciana went on a killing spree on that dusty desert road. Even the music in those scenes sounded like the score heard in Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns.
By playing a ruthless assassin in "Watch Me Kill," Jean Garcia adds action star to her diverse resume as an actress. She was a cool and calculated killer. However, when Lourdes came into the picture, Luciana could not seem to just abandon the young girl. She was also haunted by her traumatic past which molded her into the hardened woman she was now, and this sort of character drama is right down Garcia's alley.
Fresh from her Cinemalaya film "Children of the River," child actress Junyka Santarin got to showcase more of her thespic skills as Lourdes. The presence of this girl radically affected Luciana and her spare lifestyle, and it was up to Santarin to show us why Luciana was so drawn to her. The background and behavior of Lourdes was the biggest question mark in the film and the polarizing answer would not be forthcoming until the very end.
Acierto won a Best Director prize for his first feature film "The Grave Bandits" in the Metro Manila Filmfest New Breed category back in 2012. "Watch Me Kill" is his second feature film, and again he won Best Director, a perfect two for two record, a director to look out for in the future. However, I was not surprised that it did not win Best Picture. While the technical aspects of this film were unquestionably topnotch, there were still some puzzling aspects of Luciana's unraveling which could have been better told or developed or cleared up. 7/10.
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