DCRJ's MOVIE REVIEWS: MANILA KINGPIN: THE ASIONG SALONGA STORY (2011)

We saw MANILA KINGPIN: THE ASIONG SALONGA STORY (2011) at SM Mall of Asia Jan. 7, 2012 Saturday. Highly entertaining remake of the 1961 Joseph 'Erap' Estrada film. It stars Erap's nephew George Estregan Jr. as the anti-hero Asiong Salonga. Shot in magnificent black and white which gave me a feeling that it was really done in 1951. The flashbacks are done in sepia tone which added an artistic sense to it. Action scenes are rugged, brutal and well-choreographed giving a John Woo kind-of-flair to the sequences. Despite all of these positiveness there are obvious flaws, the timeline lacks sense of continuity jumping from year to year without the benefit of subtitled dates, some slang words like 'bossing' and 'tol (short for utol) at least for me sounded anachronistic...'bossing' became popular in the Eat Bulaga years often refered to bossing Vic, such words were never heard or used in 1951. Some haircuts doesn't blend well with the 50s period. The grand scope of Manila imagery in the 1950s is lacking. George Estregan Jr lived and breathed Asiong Salonga, he was born to play this role impressively giving his best acting so far. The Kalesa gunbattle chase is amusing and a memorable one. I want to say that this is the superior film in the Mtero Manila Film Festival but I won't since it's the only film I saw of the MMFF entries, but I've seen the other entries trailer and I can freely say that among the trailers, Manila Kingpin is the most artistically made film of all. My ratings: 4.5 out of 5 Biscuits !




HARI NG TONDO - OST of MANILA KINGPIN: The Asiong Salonga Story (2011) by GLOC 9 feat. Denise