Dance of the Steelbars (2013)

Jumat, 28 Juni 2013

Dance of the Steelbars (2013)

Dance of the Steelbars (Cesar Apolinario & Marnie Manicad, 2013)

After a rap-fuelled montage of various shots of Cebu City’s bustling streetscapes, the gravelly voice of Patrick Bergin introduces the provincial jail of Cebu as some sort of hell on Earth. The images that accompany Bergin’s lengthy opener seem to support his assessment. Prostitution is rampant. Gambling is commonplace. Bergin rambles on about the rampant corruption inside the prison, and how the warden, a brute of a man who lords over his kingdom of thieves and murderers, has kept the place in a persistent state of desperation. However, death is also a commodity, and power is a prize worth paying for. A riot takes place. The warden is found dead. The perps, the assistant warden and his lackey, have begun preparations for their own take-over. Bergin’s testimonial seems to be accurate.

Cesar Apolinario and Marnie Manicad’s Dance of the Steelbars opens with some sort of promise. The directors, without wasting any time, drape their film with a semblance of grit and anger, the stuff that usually fuel the most ordinary of prison stories to greatness. Unfortunately, that initial promise seems to be the only near-great thing in the film, and the greater the promise, the more resounding the fall. The film falters Right after Bergin’s stirring description of his Cebu prison. The corrupt warden is replaced by a kind one, who initiates various reforms, the most pertinent of which is a morning dance exercise. The initial grit dissipates. The anger is mostly censored. What remains are just seeds of awful melodrama, seeds that Apolinario and Manicad fervently cultivate into what essentially is a hit-or-miss affair that confuses advocacy for advertisement.

So Bergin plays Frank Parish, an American who gets erroneously imprisoned for the death of someone he was just trying to help. Frank’s prison pals include Allona (Joey Paras), a gay man who pins his hope on his British penpal who thinks he’s a girl, and Mando (Dingdong Dantes), a dance instructor who is imprisoned for killing a gay man who attempted to seduce him. Apolinario and Manicad spend most of the film woefully exploring their various dilemmas, from Frank’s vapid apprehension to help other people to Mando’s shallow father issues.

As in all lazily-written sagas, a deus ex machina appears to save the day. Here, the deus ex machina is a politician, who unceremoniously grabs the limelight from the real heroes of the film. This is perhaps the film’s biggest sin. In the guise of advocacy, it maneuvers its focus from the inspirational inmates to needy attention-whores, making it seem like their success is more a product of bureaucratic intervention than the prisoners’ own will to reform. Instead of depicting actual efforts of the inmates to change and break common conventions, Apolinario and Manicad decide to manufacture melodramas that are nowhere near as inspirational as a pixelated video of a thousand hopeful orange-suited felons grooving to Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

Thankfully, Apolinario and Manicad decide to end the film with a choreographed number by the Cebu prisoners. Although inconsistently shot, the finale at least reminded the film’s viewers as to why it exists, not because of the manicured faces of moneyed politicos and the big-named celebrities, or the American man who strangely becomes the viewers’ eyes and ears to what essentially is a Filipino experience, but because of the prisoners who took that one step away from the world’s expectations and as a result did wonders. Sadly, even in that final number, the dance would still give way to awkward close-ups of faces the film never needed, enunciating either Apolinario and Manicad’s fatal confusion or their compromised ambition.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Banal (2008)

Minggu, 06 Januari 2008

Banal (2008)

Banal (Cesar Apolinario, 2008)
English Title: Holy

Had it been better funded, better directed and better acted, Cesar Apolinario's Banal (Holy) could have been more than a mere passable thriller. As it is, Banal is an utterly inconsistent thus disappointing film, one that attempts to tell a capably conceived story about two cops sitting on opposite ends of the moral spectrum coming to terms with their respective moralities, but failing miserably plainly because of its less-than-competent execution. Cris (Paolo Contis) and Jayson (Alfred Vargas) were classmates in SWAT training under Major Sagala (Christopher de Leon), infamous for his odd drinking habits (pouring liquor into cans of Coca Cola) and his unsavory methods in training his cadets. Cris is the incorruptible cop, often earning the ire of crooked powerful politicians. Jayson on the other hand is ambitious to the point of sacrificing his ideals for the sake of a few thousands of pesos pilfered during one of his raids. Despite their differences, the two cops form a friendship, bound to be tested when a plot to assassinate the visiting pope is discovered.

Banal is the first feature film for director Apolinario. His training as news reporter and documentarian for a local television network is both boon and bane. Not counting the several narrative liberalities made, it is quite noticeable that the film is aptly researched. There is a genuine effort in portraying the particular risks and hardships members of the SWAT go through especially in their difficult training sessions. Much more intriguing is that there are no pretenses of uprightness or nobility in the local police force in the film, unlike most other local films or shows that would always strive to put the government in a good light lest they incur the wrath of the politically-motivated censors board (Banal was actually given an X-rating before the censors changed its mind). There is always that swelling atmosphere of sickening bureaucracy and media hogging that overwhelms the quiet sacrifices of the cops in the field. Apolinario also has an eye for detail and knows where to place his camera for maximum effect, especially during key scenes. Journalism is a job that requires the keenest of attention and a good grasp of honesty. These virtues he probably learned from fervently gathering information on a certain lead or being on the field and catching sensational news as they happen. Unfortunately, these journalistic virtues aren't enough to make a good film.

It's quite obvious that Apolinario relies a lot from his actors and to give them due credit, leads Contis and Vargas render serviceable jobs. On the other hand, veteran actor De Leon, while the obvious scene stealer with his unmitigated blend of method acting and histrionics, falls short in terms of both subtlety and sincerity. Other than that one scene where his alcohol-addicted major defeatedly salutes his former cadets, De Leon's antics never really rise above plain play-acting. Supporting cast members like Paolo Paraiso as wooden comic relief and Cassandra Ponti as woodenly sobful wife fare much worse. It's a good thing that Pen Medina, who plays corrupt provincial Congressman Manalo, is allowed to liven up things a bit by converting an underwritten role into something else, a representation of everything that's gone wrong in the Philippines.

Sadly, none of Apolinario's actors are adept action stars. Contis is a child actor turned all-around thespian. Vargas started out doing sexy roles in movies before being given a break doing various roles in television. De Leon is predominantly a dramatic actor. It bears stressing that Apolinario cannot direct a decent action scene and I believe he knows this. For example, in what was supposed to be a precursor for an all-out brawl, Apolinario opts to forgo of the rumble and instead, cheatingly inserts a shot of an ambulance siren (to signify that the brawlers were probably hospitalized) before showing the aftermath of the affray. In a climactic sequence which further proves Apolinario's incompetence in directing action scenes, Major Sagala and Jayson are trying to diffuse a bomb before it reaches the pope's vehicle. Everything turns into an incomprehensible mess when Apolinario, with the help of horrendous editing, mixes archived footage of Pope John Paul's last visit to Manila (and all the while I thought this was a fictional future pope, especially since the production design hints of the present as the setting of the film), and a horribly directed and acted scene of Sagala hanging while shooting from the passenger's seat of a rapidly moving car. To add insult to injury, the action sequence ends in a computer generated explosion that is just unintentionally hilarious.

Had Apolinario the vision to get veteran action stars instead of former and present matinée idols, stars who are trained in daring stunts and could've mustered enough pulsating excitement to salvage these pitifully choreographed and visualized sequences, he could have successfully cloaked his inadequacies as director. Had Apolinario the discipline to hone his journalistic tendencies into his filmmaking without sacrificing narrative logic and had the producers the common sense not to rely on cheap computer graphics especially given their budgetary limitations and gone the traditional way of blowing up junk vehicles and using real fire or just refrain from spoon feeding their audience (like in one scene atop a building, wherein we hear the sounds of a helicopter engine. It could have stopped there but instead a badly rendered computer-generated helicopter embarrassingly emerges from nowhere, sending chills down my spine, not in a good way), Banal could have been the Filipino mainstream movie all of us have been waiting for, a fresh yet still very commercial police story that actually has something relevant and interesting to say. As it is, Banal is one overpraised blunder.

******
This review is also published in The Oblation.