Flick Review: Honor Thy Father

12/27/2015 11:30:27 PM

Photo credit: Reality Entertainment

With the sudden rise of biopics at the recent Metro Manila Film Festival editions, some filmmakers are taking a different-but-similar approach: that is to bring back the pictures depicting reality in our lives regardless if it make everyone feel heavy about it.

Enter Honor Thy Father into the picture. A product by the same production that gave you On The Job, the current Reality Entertainment offering stars John Lloyd Cruz in another challenging role. Perhaps, topping the one he did on Star Cinema’s The Trial in 2014.

With the supporting cast such as Meryll Soriano, Lander Vera Perez, William Martinez, and Tirso Cruz III, Cruz portrayed Edgar, a family man who will do drastic decisions and desperate actions for the love of his family. And it doesn’t matter if there will be a divine intervention along the way. ‘Cause it’s quite obvious the firm is building stories which mirrors what has been real to us; and that’s not a bad thing at all. In fact, it’s very compelling. Very convincing that even in our tiniest cell of consciousness, things like that happen a lot. All that despite having several lacking scenes if we talked about continuity.

While I commend Michiko Yamamoto and Erik Matti for a great pull-off on the trick, sadly Honor Thy Father was pulled out from several movie houses after the Christmas Day showing. Rubbing salt to the cut was the MMFF committee decision to pull HTF out of contention for the Best Picture. Ouch. After being part of the Cinema One Originals opening ceremonies, MMFF ruled a DQ finish.

I hope these crappy peeps regret their decision soon. Even if Honor Thy Father couldn’t do what Heneral Luna once did of “demand via word of mouth,” hopefully it could still make an impact to everyone who watched that. Definitely there’s still hope for the Philippines to do more qualitative films.

The verdict: 9.3

Author: slickmaster | ©2015 september twenty-eight productions