Cavite

As joint ventures go, this is pretty hardcore; co-writers/directors DelaLlana and Gamezon have basically compressed and reworked the timehonedconcept of real time (Fox TV`2 24 (2001), Joel Schumacher`s LarryCohen-scripted Phone booth (2002) and John Badham`s Nick of time (1995) inthe process doing most everything else - lensing, editing, acting -themselves. The result reads like an inverted 24. Instead of a professionaloperative, a rank amateur is coerced and cajoled into taking part invarious terrorist activities, facing the threat of having his immediatefamily killed if he does not follow instructions to the letter.Bar the opening and closing coda - with sobering allusions to the mainprotagonists existence - the real time setup makes this filmmaking at itsmost basic and therefore all the more shattering to the viewer; with ahandheld camera tracking the protagonist through the labyrinthian paths ofPhillipine society, showing what is for him essentially a foreign land eventhough it is his birthplace. This nightmarish situation goes over the topand turns into a literal dead end street.JAN ELVSÉN