Gorgeously shot and resembling old pictures brought to life, director Raymond Red’s Manila’s Finest is a quiet period thriller that follows a policeman in the late 1960s as he observes how the city he loves is slowly changing. Gangs, corrupt politicians, and businessmen are turning Manila into a dark, unsafe city.
With lush production design by Digo Ricio, aided by visual effects to bring the full image to Manila circa late 1960s and the sharp and detailed cinematography by director Raymond Red, Manila’s Finest is a visually arresting look at a moment when things changed for our country.
The film follows Captain Homer Magtibay (Piolo Pascual), a police officer with principles, who leads by example. He is good to his team – 1st Lieutenant Billy Ojeda (Enrique Gil), Severino Meneses (Romnick Sarmienta), and Rogelio Liwanag (Joey Marquez) – and well as his loving wife, Yoly (Rica Paralejo) and their children, and his daughter from another relationship, Agnes (Ashtine Olviga).
Yes, Homer is far from a perfect man. While he does good for his community and even maintains a having some sort of working relationship with Manila’s gang heads. But he’s not some fictional hero without faults. He’s painted as human, and this includes his relationship with a sex worker, Janette (Jasmine Curtis-Smith).
As the number of murder cases begin to rise at the same rate as the slums are growing, evidence points to a bloody feud between rival gangs. But Homer and his Station Chief, Major Conrado Belarmino (Ariel Rivera), dig deeper to find that men in power are pulling the strings. It doesn’t help that the Philippine Constabulary, through orders of the president, have started to interfere with the work of the police. Student rallies decrying the corruption that has equally risen, and Homer and his team are caught in the middle of all these changes, not just in the Manila, and invariably, across the entire country.
There’s a remarkable restraint in the screenplay by Moira Lang, Michiko Yamamoto, and Sherad Sanchez and it is so well executed by Director Raymond Red. Everything is just bubbling under the surface. The world is changing, but it’s not explosive. It’s just an accumulation of little things that puts pressure on each character’s principles and beliefs.
While the film does have a major plot to follow – Homer’s investigation into the brutal murders in the city – the film feels almost like a slice of life as it seamlessly shifts from character to character to create a feeling of what that period was like, what change can look like, and how quietly it can creep up on us, that we are all caught unaware.
While this is Pascual’s and Gil’s movie, every member of the cast delivers exceptional work, making it a true ensemble effort. Everyone contributed greatly to the mood, to bringing to life Red and the writing team’s exploration of when the dictatorship began to erode the very moral fabric of the country. What we see in the film is an ideal police force; one that cares about the people they are out to protect. People who believed in justice. But as the Philippine Constabulary begins to overlaps in their duties with the cops, and for the most nefarious of reasons for the top brass in the government, we see the deterioration of that moral center. We are given a first-hand look of how the police lost their power and their way.
Manila’s Finest is a gripping thriller and drama that explores humanity on the edge of change. It’s a look into our history from the points-of-view of people who were caught unaware by shifts in our society and it’s an important film to catch.
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