Old lovers’ unique backstory survives action-drama’s glitzy distractions

EDDIE Garcia plays a lawyer in love with a criminal in “Boy Golden.”

Last month, we observed that the key question about Chito Roño’s Metro Manila Film Festival entry, “Boy Golden: Shoot to Kill,” was if it would still end up as a good film despite all those colorful distractions, like diverting period action-drama conceits.

Now comes the answer: The distractions run away with the flick.

Initially, the movie’s florid period images and set pieces give the production an atmospheric feel and flavor all its own. After a diverting while, however, they end up calling too much attention to themselves and their alleged authenticity is called into question by excessive execution and an increasing lack of believability.

For instance, all sorts of violent incidents and encounters happen on a period street—but aside from the thugs and victims, where are the people? The sense of unreality makes the colorful action look like it’s taking place in a cinematic vacuum—and, so much for credibility and empathy.

In another complicated set piece with a Sta. Ana neighborhood’s rooftops for location, many similarly-costumed young thugs travel through the unique locale via prodigious leaps and other acrobatic feats, making the pursuing cops look inept and ridiculous in the process. But at the end of the long sequence, little actual plot progression is achieved.

A third action scene that’s uniquely conceptualized is set in an opium den cum gambling den, so more eye-catching images are produced. A fourth confrontation is set in an ice plant, with the loser being impaled on a hook that’s usually employed to lift blocks of ice in preparation for delivery—and so it goes.

GLORIA Sevilla steals the show as a crime boss.

In all of this diverting visual byplay and interplay, more substantial issues, like character growth, backstory and psychological conflict, are pooh-poohed away—with the exception of scenes involving KC Concepcion, who manages to keep her gun moll and femme fatale character in relatively firm emotional focus, so she comes up with the film’s best portrayal.

In so doing, she kisses her old, predictable screen image goodbye, and is clearly ready for even more daunting challenges in films to come—if producers will oblige!

Another unique thespic achievement in “Boy Golden” is the joint “sequential” portrayal turned in by veteran actors Eddie Garcia and Gloria Sevilla. He plays a worldly wise lawyer and she’s a crime boss—but it turns out that this senior pair shares a past that runs way back to their childhood!

Their pure love for one another was waylaid and sabotaged by the criminal milieu that surrounded them but the movie’s denouement shows that, contra mundum, love does indeed conquer all!

For KC’s gutsy portrayal and for the old lovers’ unique backstory, we are grateful to director Roño, who proves with this period movie that, attention-calling distractions aside, he can still pull a production together to come up to a testy and tasty thematic peak.

The action-drama encounters and staging excesses are there to keep the film visually charged and “eventful,” but when the pulsating tempo pauses for breath, Roño is able to sneak in some insightful and “relatable” personal asides to make the viewing experience thematically worth all the florid, turgid fuss and bother.