Manny "Pac-Man" Pacquiao Film Retrospective Part 1

In just a few weeks Manny "Pac-Man' Pacquiao will fight what is perhaps the greatest fight of his entire career: Floyd Mayweather, the undefeated boxer often touted as the best pound for pound boxer in the world. The jury is out on who will win, and I have my own bets on who will take the cake.

The Pac-man is probably as close to a modern national icon as we are going to get. With a rags to riches story borne from pure hard work and determination, he has transformed from a young promising boxer to a legend. It's hard not to get inspired sometimes.

In honor of the Pac-man's storied boxing career I decided to make this post about the "Pambansang Kamao". Let's take a look at films that feature the life of the famed boxer.

When talking about films featuring Pacquiao, there is the forgettable 2006 offering Pacquiao: The Movie. The film is directed by Joel Lamangan, so expect the usual Lamangan-esque filmmaking at play: overwrought melodrama and dramatization, for one.

The film starts off with Pacquiao's 2005 loss to Erik Morales and goes on from there, charting his journey from defeat to his rematch with Morales a year later. The film creates conflict from many of the things Pacquiao was accused of doing at the time, including affairs with several women, and a reliance on gambling.

The film is heavily dramatized, with new characters inserted and personalities changed for the sake of drama. The overall effect unfortunately is pedestrian at best. Jericho Rosales with his good boy looks dons a mustache and tries his hardest to emulate Pacquiao's accent, an understandable yet still baffling decision, as none of the other characters resemble their counterparts anyway. He ends up pretty much miscast. His co-star Bea Alonzo manages to do a little more as his wife, but you can only do so much with a cringe inducing script.

There's also a subplot starring Jay Alonzo as a disgraced boxer who goes off the deep end, which comes off as rather superfluous. To be fair, it would make a decent MMK episode. Bayani Agbayani as comic relief simply does not work, as a comic relief is horribly out of place in an otherwise serious movie. He doesn't have any lines to work with either, so it's not really his fault.The rest of the movie looks decidedly low-budget and seems to have been made to milk the fans of the boxer and the Jericho-Bea loveteam.

As an inspirational movie it falls flat as it fails to give any sort of inspiration. As a sports movie the action scenes are boring and punch drunk. This is no Rocky, that's for sure.

The latest of the films to tackle Pacquiao's life is this year's Kid Kulafu, directed by Paul Soriano. Instead of being a comprehensive take on the life of the boxer, it smartly focuses on Pacquiao's early life as an amateur boxer.

Buboy Villar is perfect for the role. After his stint on Derick Cabrido's Children's Show, he has the acting chops and fighting experience to be the young Pacquiao. Pictures of the boxer as a young man show there is a resemblance between the two.

There are no enemies personified in Kid Kulafu, there is no Ivan Drago or Apollo Creed to anger the audience for the inevitable showdown. Instead, in this film, the battle is against life itself. The hardship of Pacquiao and his family is shown without being exploitative. Somehow, this story decision works very well. Pacquiao's aspirations and fears manifest themselves through strange dreams. Aside from the physical battle against one's body, there is the mental battle inside, and the film does a great job mixing these two aspects.

The young boxer is guided through life via a series of mentors -from his mother in his childhood years, to his uncle who taught him boxing basics, to the neighbor who taught him advanced knowledge in boxing. With each step the young Pacquiao approaches a future that we all know now, but one that appears hazy and distant from his perspective.

The movie is aided by decent editing and an effectively pulse pounding soundtrack. The ending sequence, which is for all intents and purposes a montage, caps the story well, although I personally wanted more from the story as the point where the story stops is kind of abrupt.

The film portrays the fights with some good camerawork and production design (something that was sorely lacking in Pacquiao: The Movie). You don't even need to see the fight to feel excited, as in one scene where one of Pacquiao's fights is heard only through a radio.

Thanks to skillful directing, a slick production, and fantastic acting, not only is Kid Kulafu probably one of the best contemporary Filipino sports films around, it's a very good film in and of itself.

Documentaries about Pacquiao are mostly small scale, a notable exception being this year's Manny, narrated by Liam Neeson. The film chronicles Pacquiao's boxing career and his entrance into the public consciousness. However, it enters the narrative not during his peak; instead, it enters the fray during what could be Pacquiao's darkest hour: his back to back losses against Timothy Bradley (a controversial decision) and Juan Manuel Marquez (a devastating KO defeat).

The docu also remarks on Pacquiao's early life, his relationship with his staff and trainers, including his manager, his trainer Freddie Roach, and his (now ex-) conditioning trainer Alex Ariza. There are also some interviews with celebrities, Filipino sports commentators such as Ronnie Nathanielsz, and people working in the boxing industry.

The movie also touches on one of Pacquiao's aspects that critics argue takes away from his boxing: his forays into multiple areas. Not only is Pacquiao a boxer, he is also a billiards player, a basketball player, a singer, a congressman and an actor. For a man who was deprived of his young life thanks to a life of poverty, he seems to be doing all he can to catch up.

It's not the best of sports documentaries, and among those that focus on the sweet science (such as Tyson and Thrilla in Manila) it comes up as merely average. But for people who have no idea who Pacquiao is, this may be a good place to start.

Boxing, Liam Neeson narrates, takes such a toll on a man. But for someone like Pacquiao, he willingly takes the weight of the world  on his back, because he's one of the few people around that can take it. 

This is getting a bit too long, so I'll end part one here. Up next, a look at Pacquiao's lesser known  acting career. And believe me, it's lesser known for a reason.