Cinemalaya 2014: The Janitor

Only one review for today. Don't worry, things will pick up on Friday.

Director's Showcase

The Janitor

The massacre in an RCBC bank in Cabuyao, Laguna was one of the most bloody bank robberies in the history of the Philippines. The Janitor is loosely based on these events. So is it all worth it?

Dennis Trillo is Crisanto Espina. Once a cop, a series of events has put him in a desk job training security guards. His superior officer (Richard Gomez) then gives him an assignment: hunt down and kill the suspects in the robbery. No more due process. No trials. Just one verdict and one punishment.

He then dispatches of these people one by one as he gets to the bottom of it all. But questions start to nag him about the morality of his actions and the truth of the matter.

The Janitor is a great action/thriller as it is, but there's just one problem. Imagine if, in Citizen Kane, you see Orson Welles' character riding Rosebud in the snow, twenty minutes in. Or what if in The Sixth Sense we see Bruce Willis floating around and being all transparent in the first third of the film. That is kind of what happened to this movie. By giving away clues that are not subtle, the impact of the twist near the end no longer registers.

Some fellow moviegoers have compared this movie to On The Job, although this movie lacks the style and grit of that movie. This is not to say that the movie is not capable; on the contrary, The Janitor remains to be an effective piece that stands on its own. It still serves as a commentary on corruption, not only how it affects Philippine society, but also how that corruption scars us as persons.

Acting wise the ensemble cast delivers a great performance. (For the ladies and similarly inclined, this also has to be the most hunky group of bank robbers in Philippine Cinema. I kid.)  The film is solid technically.

The Janitor is entertaining, but certain plot choices make the overall product less exciting than it could have been. It's still the best among the Director's Showcase films I've seen so far. 7 bank robbers/10.