The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
The scene between Bauan, Batangas policeman Marlon (Mark Anthony Fernandez) and his son watching a home video of ferocious animals preying at each other is a giveaway.
The opening scene alone, the torture of actress Cataleya Surio in the hands of Marlon foreshadows the brutality of man to dominate humanity sans impunity.
It says all about the theme of “Kaliwaan,” a film project created onscreen by internationally acclaimed filmmaker Brillante Ma. Mendoza, and directed by Daniel Palacio (“Pailalim,” “The Brokers” and the upcoming political thriller “Kandidato”) for Viva Films and which is now streaming in Vivamax.
That survival is a game of the strong and the mighty while the weak and the lowly are kept as underlings—both in the animal kingdom and the human world.
Well, that is only one way of looking at life and at art.
“Kaliwaan” talks about the bitter discovery of a young security guard named Boogie Alcantara (Vince Rillon) of his spa masseuse girlfriend Monica (AJ Raval) having forced sex with an obsessed young Muslim client Raji (Juami Gutierrez). While Monica sends off her admirer to his car, Boogie comes out from a dim corner, picks up a big stone and in his impulse, hits the face of his rival to a near-death bloodshed.
It turns out Raji’s brother (Raion Sandoval) is up for revenge for the crime committed against his kin so he tracks down Boogie in every nook and cranny of the town when Monica confesses the identity of the suspect to a local police authority who is seated just a few meters away from Marlon in the precinct.
From here on, it’s a Muslim family against a Catholic flock of the Alcantaras while cover-up of Boogie’s misdemeanor starts under the watch of his loving uncle who entrusts his nephew to stay in the house of the cop’s hatchet man TJ (Felix Roco) who lives with his younger sister he sexually molests her in the guise of a plaything.
Retaliation as a foreshadowed act is intensified in the Muslim’s spiritual order of things as he enjoins his brothers who initially threaten and intimidate Boogie’s family to a fault when Marlon has also his own share of coercive gun toting spree on Raji’s surveilling kin in the neighborhood.
While Raji is recovering from his unconsciousness, Marlon and TJ are planning offensive attacks against their nemeses and vice-versa with a common ultimate goal in mind—to demolish each one and in the end, to emerge as survivors. Therefore, it’s survival of the fittest in the highest order.
The underlings in Boogie and his family especially his mom (Irma Adlawan), Monica and her fellow massage parlor workers, Raji and his family with Allah-fearing dad (Julio Diaz) are the birds of prey as their predators as well as protectors hunt down each other to rule the jungle.
In the end, the anarchy in the familial conflicts reigns as Boogie is tortured and mutilated by Raji’s brothers who afterward find solace and peace in filial piety until Marlon stages his reprisal by gunning down all members of the Muslim family aboard a car.
