Asian movies

[mappi]

On the job [2013 : Tagalog : 2hr : Crime [Drama, Suspense, Mystry, Social (Politics, corruption, poverty)]
Country : Philippines

Written & Directed by Erik Matti



[could be a bit violent for some audience]

Important Note : If you are planing to watch this film, please do not read any reveiw or synopsis of the film over the internet. They give away a lot and break the film maker's idea of narational flow. A synopsis does not do any justice neither to the film nor to the audience. It has to be experienced. Plus, I suggest you to watch this movie in your next free time possible, before it gets massacred by Hollywood.

An experienced assassin and a rookie hitman team up to takedown their targets in plain sight. The police are finding it hard to crack these murder cases, as the assassin duo seem to be invisible. A high profile murder thickens the pressure and a rookie cop takes over the case from an experienced cop. After coping up from several misunderstandings, the two cops team up to crack the mystery, and what they unearth should have rested eternally buried.

Spoiler: 

The film maker has nothing to hide here. But he just needs us to follow him. 20 minutes into the film, I could not make out anything until they reach the prison. Then you start to understand the beauty of the tale, and start connecting the dots and the whole scam neatly gets unfolded before you. And from here, another beauty is that, nothing happens as you would expect it to. Why I had mentioned not to read any synopsis over the net, because every review starts with something like "Two prisoners are brought out of the prison to commit murders". I felt that, it was giving away too much as thats a suspense the film maker wants to keep until the end of Act 1.

An awesome film. A RGV's dream. Spining together the whole plot was terrific. More than the power, the helplessness was captured rawly. At a point of time, you will be following about 3 different patterns, a deviation kind of roads, and the journey turns into an experience when the winding crooked roads meet up in a junction which will make you pray that you never took any of these roads, nor wish to be at this miserable junction. All laurels goes to the screen writer and the director for giving us a pure mixture of every genre possible in its 2 hours runtime. The lead man who plays the experienced assassin drives home with all the performence accolades. The BGM and the songs used were spell bounding. There are a few pretty women in this movie, well, I liked them all. This is not a spoiler, as you will eventually end-up there to know the story - Murder attempt on one guy called PO is a spinner in the film. Absolutely brilliant. The whole Hospital episode will put you back straight in your seats.

Just a thought :
This film has all the potential to be adopted for TFI. An able director can pull it off quite efficiently, and I bet it on Suseenthiran. Casting could be an easy task, but the locations will be a challenge. A similar setup like Pandyanadu (Early morning-Bharathiraja-Escape sequence) can do wonders to the adaptation.

On the job : where death is the only retirement