Winner of this year’s Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, the trailer of Sean Ellis’s thriller Metro Manila is now an exclusive on the Telegraph!
Starring Jake Macapagal and Althea Vega, the film, which won the Audience Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, tells the story of Oscar Ramirez (Macapagal) and his family’s ill-fated search for a better life amid the hustle-and-bustle of Manila’s seedy underbelly. After securing a job as a security driver, however, Ramirez becomes caught up in the violent drug culture that dominates large areas of the city.
Jake Macapagal stars in ‘Metro Manila’.
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METRO MANILA centers around Oscar Ramirez, a poor rice farmer from the Northern Philippine mountains, who moves his family to the capital mega-city of Metro Manila in search of a better life. The sweltering capital’s bustling intensity soon overwhelms the Ramirezes, and they fall prey to the manipulations of hardened locals. Left penniless, Oscar gets a lucky break when he is offered steady work at an armored truck company and is taken under the wing of its friendly senior officer, Ong. Grateful for the job, Oscar doesn’t realize how dangerous it is; after all, Manila is a city where machine gun-wielding security guards are seen in every shop, from banks and jewelry stores to Starbucks, and where armed robbery has become a daily occurrence. Driving a cash-laden armored truck makes Oscar a moving target, but robbery isn’t the only danger he faces: when it becomes apparent that Ong was lying in wait for someone just like Oscar for some time, and that his motives for hiring him were far from altruistic, Oscar finds himself ensnared in a web of intrigue far more perilous than anything he faces on the mean streets of Manila.
Metro Manila is set to be released in the Philippines on the 9th of October this year.
Filipino films? Those aren’t films. This is a film.
Check out and ‘Like’ the Metro Manila Facebook page!
[Photo courtesy Pep.ph.]
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
Can’t wait to see it! Thanks for the “heads-up”!
INB4 da pinoy prayd.
Oh and just what we needed. A movie about the harsh truth of imperial manila. Can’t wait to watch it.
I’d really like to see this!
A bit of action star escalation, but I love the whole Elite Squad 2 vibe it’s got going on.
(And I mention 2 instead of 1 because the second one strikes a nice balance of plot and action.)
I hate it when trailers tell you there is a twist, now you are expecting something different will happen on the film.
And parts of the film show Metro Manila’s dysfunctions all too well. No reason to get all balat-sibuyas about it, though.
Now, all the British will be blacklisted.
as if they would care, or even know where the 3rd world rice republic of the philippines is.
the queen wouldn’t meet with aquino
oxford or any other british university wouldn’t give aquino an honorary degree
class does not entertain trash
They even wield and aim their rifles properly in the movie – no Rudy Fernandez-style gunslinging and shooting while jumping in the air action. I’m pretty sure there’ll also be no scenes portraying the birthday cake mansions Pinoy directors imagine most rich people live in, no bad dubbing, and no Sarah Geronimo clones talking in shrill annoying voices in lame attempts to mimic the the laking-village classes.
No out of place dance numbers either.
Third Worldism sells, doesn’t it?
Anyway, it kinda makes you wonder why local talent and resources are seemingly much better utilized under a non-Filipino director.
Simple . Pinoy director so used to aiming for audience that adores Kris Aquino and Wille RevilaLAME. Foreign directors don’t have that handicap. Proud To Be Pinoy!!!
Yeah, true, Filipino directors, producers and writers only recycle the same outdated stories to reproduce the cheap thrills that they believe sells to the Filipino audiences. The foreign directors really work as directors, trying to add something new or uncommon to the mix.
A film with few words…superb in every little detail.They act with theit lips & eyes…Anthea so beautiful, perfect for silent movies. Now I know the difference between tragic & tragedy!
Cool! definitely to add to my film to be watched this year, I also found this movie, http://www.iloilomovie.com/, what’s next? film entitled “Davao” (starring the death squads, perhaps?)..
Poverty soft porn. 😛