:
Ian Gamazon,
Ian Gamazon,
Dominique Gonzalez,
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:
Neill Dela Llana,
Neill Dela Llana,
Ian Gamazon,
more...
see all cast/crew...
: Not Rated
: Magnolia Home Entertainment
: Foreign, Independent, Suspense/Thriller, Philippines, Crime
: 80 min.
: English
: Spanish
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A young man unwillingly becomes embroiled in a terrorist plot in Cavite, a low-budget digital video project from Filipino-American co-writers/co-directors Ian Gamazon and Neill Dela Llana. The film, shot with a jittery hand-held camera that is almost constantly in motion, opens with a panic-stricken man bringing a bomb onto a Manila bus, then cuts to San Diego, where Adam (Gamazon) is working nights as a security guard and seems to be wasting his life away before he gets a call from his mother in the Philippines, telling him he needs to come home. He's sent off by a protracted transcontinental telephone argument with his American girlfriend, but things get much worse for Adam when he lands in Manila. His mother doesn't arrive to pick him up, and he soon discovers that someone has slipped a package containing a cell phone into his backpack. The phone rings, he picks it up, and his life is changed forever. On the other end of the line, a sinister voice tells Adam that his mother and sister are being held hostage, that his every move is being watched, and that if he doesn't do exactly as the voice tells him, his family will be killed. As he's led on a grisly tour of the impoverished Cavite region, Adam, a lapsed Muslim, soon realizes that his tormentor is a member of the notorious Abu Sayyaf terrorist group, which is fighting the Philippine government to get Muslim control of the southern section of the country. While sending him through his mysterious "assignment," the caller mocks Adam for his American ways, and his lack of awareness of his own culture. Cavite was selected by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art for inclusion in New Directors/New Films in 2006. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
GreenCine Says:
Cavite (2005) was filmed for a song but had such a perfect concept for a low-budget film - one main character, shot on location in Manila, it was a "paragon of guerrilla resourcefulness and a model citizen of the global village," wrote Dennis Lim in the Village Voice, "a more anxious and vivid experience than most movies with budgets literally a thousand times bigger... [an] impressively tense micro-thriller."
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| Philippine Scare-orist
by talltale
August 11, 2006 - 5:16 PM PDT
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5 out of 5 members found this review helpful
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Somewhat maddening but worth the watch, CAVITE is most surprising due to the fact that, once you've finished viewing, you realize that the camera has remained almost solely on one person (quite often, his back) for the entire movie. Yet--because of the situation and filmmaking style--it still grabs you. Initially off-putting due to some jerky hand-held camerawork that is completely unnecessary (both the jerks and the scene itself), the movie settles down to follow a young Philippine-American who has returned to his birthplace to "visit" his family. One of the early faults of the film is that he must already know that his mom and sister have been kidnapped, yet we see him talking and arguing with his girlfriend on the phone twice, seemingly much more concerned with her problems than with those of his imperiled relatives. Does he know what is going on, or doesn't he? We (and perhaps the filmmakers) don't seem all that clear about it. Once he arrives in the Philippines, however, the movie picks up its pace and doesn't let go till the end. (its entire length is a mere 80 minutes).
Economy of budget must account for many interesting elisions: the big bank "heist" is never shown (he goes in, he comes out); the results of his "assignment" are simply unseen (and unheard--which would have been easy and cheap enough to manage); ditto the final result of his search. All this makes a problematic story seem ever more absurd, yet I hung on for the duration. As, I suspect, will you. Politically, the movie is disturbing in a worthwhile way because it slams you up against terrorism by putting you in touch with the "oppressed" in a manner that is both tricky and enticing. I'll be interested in discovering what this filmmaking team of Neill Dela Llana and Ian Gamazon does next. Here, Dela Llana co-directed, co-produced, co-wrote, co-edited, and did the cinematography; Gamazon co-directed, co-produced, co-wrote, co-edited, and acted the lead. Talk about jacks-of-all-trades! If the filmmakers were any less talented, they could be accused of having made a vanity production. But they're not, and they didn't. "Cavite," for all its faults, is still quite an accomplishment. |
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GreenCine Member Rating
(Average 5.56)
16 Votes
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