Victor detonates bombs on the side

MANILA, Philippines — Fans know Victor Neri for his action films and his singing — early on in his long-standing career. Those who have followed him in recent years know he has parlayed his talents as chef in advising food entrepreneurs about menu planning.

But only a few know him as a bomb detonator who got into what he calls a sideline because he’s a normal dad who fears for the safety of his sons, aged 17 and five.

“I’m a peace advocate,” he says after the presscon of Net 25’s new musical film Hapi ang Buhay, produced by EBC Films.

That means worrying enough for his and his friends’ children, he decided to apply for law enforcement training with The Philippine Coast Guard bomb squad. Along the way, Victor discovered how much the country lacked EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) technicians. So he pursued the work with such passion, he reached level two, or a notch lower than instructor category.

Victor trained for eight months and learned how to detonate a bomb as part of the Coast Guard battalion. Months of training, which included learning how to respond to bomb threats, took away Victor’s fear of detonating these explosives.

“We disposed many World War II bombs,” he states, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do.

After that, Victor worked for a year at the Bureau of Immigration, where he joined the fugitive search unit which hunts down and arrests terrorists hiding in the country and threatening peace and order.

These, and his background as an actor used to firing guns and seeing all sorts of action on screen, make a musical comedy like Hapi ang Buhay a big leap of faith for Victor. In the film, written and directed by the award-winning Carlo Ortega Cuevas (Best Director in a Foreign Language or Walang Take Two at the International Filmmaker Festival of World Cinema in London and Best Newcomer Filmmaker of the Year at the World Film Awards in Jakarta), Victor morphs from action man in BuyBust to simple Juan de la Cruz.

“Hapi ang Buhay is very light and relaxing,” Victor relates.

He didn’t need a lot of convincing to do the film. First, Victor, the filmmakers and his co-stars are Iglesia ni Kristo members. Second, Victor believes in the film’s moral lesson on proper use of social media in the era of fake news.

The film is something he and other veteran actors like him, who have earned the right to choose their projects, are duty-bound to do.

“I’ve reached that point in my career where I want to control the content of my projects,” he explains.

That’s why he’s grateful for having found a film that’s “like a breath of fresh air; that has moral values.”

For someone who turns down projects, not because of budget constraints but because of a story’s shortcomings, Victor must have found something worth his while indeed.