One
crooked Filipino congressman is used to handing out the traditional sort of
bribes, but when his daughter is kidnapped, he also has to give a little
financial consideration to get the cops to do their job. Unfortunately, they are determined to hassle
his former driver, whose daughter was also abducted. To save her, he will have to navigate Manila’s
seediest back alleys without the help of the openly antagonistic police in Ron
Morales’ Graceland (trailer here), which screens
during the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.
Though
ostensibly a driver, one of Marlon Villar’s primary duties is to clean up after
his boss Rep. Chango’s predatory indulgences with underage girls—or at least it
was. Given the soul-deadening acts Villar
witnessed, he is shocked when the congressman summarily fires him. The timing
is particularly bad, considering his hospitalized wife desperately needs a
transplant. That is also why suspicion immediately
falls on him after the kidnapping. In
what was to be his final task for his former employer, he picks up his daughter
Evie and her best friend Sophia Chango from school, only to be waylaid by armed
thugs.
Unfortunately,
complications arise during the kidnapping that put Villar in a particularly
tight spot. In a way, it is like a dark
twist on the botched kidnapping in Kurosawa’s High and Low, but unlike Toshirō Mifune’s upstanding Kingo Gondo,
Chango cannot be relied on to do the right thing. In fact, it quickly becomes clear the case
directly involves the politician’s bad karma.
Granted,
Graceland is not at Kurosawa’s level,
but it is an intense dark crime drama that totally pulls off some audacious hide-in-plain-sight
twists. However, it is not likely to
delight the Filipino tourism bureau, depicting unhygienic slums, where shocking
vice is carried on with near impunity, thanks to widespread police corruption.
Of
course, for a desperation-in-the-city noir, such a setting works perfectly, as
does Arnold Reyes, the terrific lead. As
Villar, he broods ferociously, but is no superman. In the complex role, he keeps viewers on the
edge of their seats and fully vested in his fate. In memorable support, Menggie Cobarrubias radiates
sleaze as the dishonorable congressman, while Dido de La Paz brings a feral
cunning to the corrupt Det. Ramos.
Tightly
helmed by Morales, Graceland works
every step of the way and completely holds together in retrospect. With its visceral sense of place and Reyes’
powerhouse performance, it is one of the best films so far at this year’s
Tribeca Film Festival. Highly
recommended, it screens again tonight (4/21) and next Saturday (4/28).
