mgleez

I saw this film at a IFP Spirt Award screening. From the description I was not expecting much. This was not a great movie but it was well constructed. The acting was simple, like it was a documentary. It moves a little slowly. Have patience. Each of the three stories had insightful moments. How they intersect is unexpected. The realistic dialog was rich and funny. Don Epifanio's laugh is unnerving and his partner is a hoot. The low budget look does not help the film but is not distracting either. None of the actors are Hollywood beauties and I liked that. As we are suppose to, I felt sorry for Pedro and his lame attempts to accomplish his task. Worth seeing if you like indy films.

I saw this at an IFP screening at the Arclight in Hollywood. I wondered why the screening was in the big theater because the number of people that attend IFP screening seems to usually be under 100. The theater did get to be about a third full even though there were conflicting Spirit Award screenings across town.

The film was hokey and yet gritty. The running chase scenes had the bad guys waving their arms and grumbling like a dumb comedy. That silliness is more than made up by the tricks done by Jaa to get away from them. The grit comes in the fight scenes. The fight scenes are stunning. The moves are very fast and the choreography is very cool, like one guy lifts his leg to kick and Jaa kicks the other leg. The wireless moves were awesome (though I think a wire was used on one of the Tuktuks, but that's a car not a person).

At the end of the film I learned why we were in the big theater. RZA came out and introduced Tony Jaa. To a standing ovation, Tony came out into the large area between the front row and the screen. He and five stunt men proceed to do many of the moves I just saw in the film. He attacked them in various ways, flying and flipping without a wire. Then he ran at all five stuntmen, jumped up, and ran past them by running on their shoulders. So cool! Another standing ovation. A popcorn bucket was held three feet over his head by a stuntman standing on another's shoulder and Tony flew up and kicked it into the audience and landed on his feet. This was so much more interesting than having the director answer production questions (which is what normally happens after IFP screenings). When he was done, he got another standing ovation.

This could be a compelling documentary, if it was a documentary. Most of the scenes of the characters seemed staged… because they were. I did like what I learned about the characters. We see one character struggling with homelessness and joblessness. We see the waning of the other's excitement about her corporate travel (a different kind of homelessness). I was interested in learning more about both, but the story telling is stingy. Maybe a third of the footage is of the two women. This film is very slow because there are too many shots of overweight pedestrians and too many establishing shots of parking lots, signs, and malls. Only in the credits did I realize it was not the same few malls, but since they all look the same, the bleakness added nothing but boredom.