Tirador

This film has all the merits of a pseudo-documentary with reality-show touch. All the main actors played their roles as real to the mundane realization of life in a slum area. The story plot, if there is really one in the classic sense of the word is an exposè of contrasts between different levels of corruption using survival as a backdrop.

I came out watching this film wondering if this kind of reality really exists, at least at the level that is being conveyed. I grew up in an upper middle-class part of Quezon City. The stark contrast of existence of the different societal levels leads me to think this movie only bolsters the ever widening disparity. In one scene were the father died, the son seemed stoic and unperturbed by what just ensued. This untroubled feeling is shared by the rest of the neighbors, and death is detached. Survival has become instinctually animal.