May 29, 2022
Popoy (Vince Rillon) had a wife Aica (Jela Cuenca) and young son. To support his family and his parents (Julio Diaz and Raquel Montesa), Popoy worked as a bodyguard of gambling lord Rodolfo and his card shark dealer mistress Xandra (Jennifer Tee). Pressure to earn more cash was rising, as his ailing mother badly needed a kidney transplant right away.
One night, a high-stakes game went awry when a client wound up dead at Rodolfo's poker table. Desperate to raise money to bribe the police, Rodolfo hired Mika (Angeli Khang), another skillful card shark to work miracles for him. Unfortunately, Rodolfo couldn't keep his hands to himself, Xandra will not take his two-timing sitting down.
Like his delivery boy role in "Siklo," Vince Rillon is back as yet another ordinary guy with a "jologs" hairstyle who somehow got to romance all these sexy ladies who do not put up any resistance. The role of Rodolfo looked like it was written with Baron Geisler in mind. Gleeful Geisler went all out sick and sleazy with all the sado-masochistic sex play he did
Jennifer Tee gamely played the dominatrix role of Xandra, but she had an ironically unexpressive poker-face which was unconvincing for a fierce woman on the card table and in bed. As Mika, Angeli Khang got to play a stronger, more confident character now, than the exploited victims she played before, but with less screen time.
Like "Palitan", this new Vivamax film also had Brillante Mendoza's name above the title. However, it was Phil Giordano who directed this, in his feature film debut. Giordano is an Italian-American filmmaker based in Singapore, where he won awards for directing commercials and shorts. Being an avid poker player, the plot should be right up his alley.
The story felt like you've seen it before, as you can somehow predict how the double-cross plot is going down once you knew all the characters. The gambling was not really the main point of the story, but only its backdrop. Repeated scenes of rapid-fire "pusoy" playing and unbridled copulation of assorted pairs padded the slim story up to 2 hours. 2/10.
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