I am having a break on my classic Filipino films marathon and doing some watching on the movies of the past decade that I failed to see. I’m doing this because as you can see i am doing a decade list of awards and it bothers me that I have not seen some unseen gems that I oughta have seen. I know I will not get to see them all but at least I tried.
So this time I saw 2002’s commercial flop and Lav Diaz helmer “Hesus Rebolusyonaryo”. First thing that comes to my mind after watching the movie was “Why did this flop? it was amazing!” I mean, it really was very good. They had bankable stars. A topical premise. Right amount of action. why did it flop? Because it was a thinking man’s action film?
It was part political movie, part action film, part drama and sometimes philosophical. It has all the ingredients of a Diaz movie, only this time it is cramped up to two hours. But even at a shorter running time, Diaz sure does know how to make everything his own.
Mark Anthony Fernandez was superb as Hesus. But it was Joel Lamangan who stole the show. He was beyond superb, and I never knew he could act. He was creepy and menacingly superb. For me, his performance was like Forest Whitaker’s Idi Amin in “Last King Scotland”, he should have raked in bucketloads of awards back then. But he did not.
“Hesus Rebolusnyonaryo” is one of the Philippine’s best dystopian action films ever made. Early on this decade, Diaz made a masterpiece that the people failed to notice and I really do not know why.
P.S. I love the poem recited over and over, especially the last two lines. God I love this movie.
sine olivia pilipinas 