Why people watched Asiong Salonga

All the issues concerning the 37th annual Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) had long quieted down — shut up by the major victory of Manila Kingpin: The Asiong Salonga Story.

It helped that the film reviewers who were invited to the press screening paid deserved hosannas to it. When it won Best Picture and annexed other awards to its win, the public wasn’t surprised anymore. Maybe even the other entries had conceded to Asiong’s triumph early on.

We purposely waited for the dust to settle to see if we would agree with the critiques of the other reviewers. We do. This is the reason why no issues were raised against the film winning Best Picture. Unlike in past MMFF competitions, it was clearly the best.

Is Asiong going to win Best Picture of the year? We have to consider the fact that it will be up against the other outstanding film products released in 2011. In the last MMFF, there was no contest — it was the finest in the race.

But for the year 2011, we can say that it is probably the most beautifully photographed. Its black and white cinematography screams quality.

Its other attributes include Roy Iglesias’ coherent scripting and the top caliber direction of… we don’t understand why Tikoy Aguiluz had disowned it. Tikoy is a respected filmmaker and let us just respect his decision.

Asiong’s production design is difficult to mount since it is a period film. While it is impressive in most part, we can still do a little nitpicking here and there. Budget considerations (it is an expensive movie) and the lack of proper research obviously still got in the way.

But the performances cannot be faulted. This is ER (Jeorge Estregan) Ejercito’s finest acting job to date. And he surrounds himself with about half a dozen Urian winners: Phillip Salvador (voted Best Actor of the ‘80s), Jay Manalo, Ronnie Lazaro, Ketchup Eusebio and John Regala who won MMFF Best Supporting Actor for this film.

Even Baron Geisler was a near winner (for Jay) — losing out to Ronnie (in Yanggaw) in 2008. And Ping Medina, too, another Urian favorite.

Except for Phillip who plays Asiong’s good cop brother, the men mentioned above were all police characters in the story.

The women didn’t do badly either: Valerie Concepcion and Jaycee Parker as Asiong’s mistresses. Carla Abellana as the legal wife, unfortunately, is miscast.

 The best performance in this movie actually belongs to Phillip, who also had issues with the producers. However, it is easy for the public and reviewers to dismiss Phillip’s performance as one of those because for an actor of his stature, that role is kindergarten for him. But he is most impressive in the acting department.

If ever we have quarrels with Asiong, it is the fact that — like what most other reviewers pointed out — it is not clear why the lead character went wayward. Bad seed? Bad environment?

Asiong as a film also tends to glamorize the lives of gangsters and hoodlums. Even if he is shown dying toward the end, the portrayal of Manila’s Kingpin of the ‘50s is too sleek that impressionable minds may end up idolizing his ways.

However, we are happy that the public is patronizing the movie — even if we doubt if the producers would be able to recover their investment and make profit (we hope they do to encourage them to churn out more quality productions) given its cost.

Why did people watch it? Three reasons:

1) All the awards and rave reviews it earned helped push the film’s box-office potentials.

2) It had been a long time since a local action film was exhibited in movie theaters. And The Asiong Salonga Story will not disappoint moviegoers because its action sequences are creatively staged and almost continuous.

3) We still believe that if you produce a quality film — and exhibit it in the proper venue (unlike most indies) — people will come and see it.