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Saturday, August 18, 2018

Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino 2018 | We Will Not Die Tonight and the resurgence of Pinoy Action

Kray (Erich Gonzales) is a badass stuntwoman whose life is in the doldrums. She works hard to make a living for herself and her dad, but nothing ever seems to click. One day, her old friend Ramil (Alex Medina) brings Kray's old crew back together for a special task that sounds super seedy. The crew rolls with it and surprise surprise, finds themselves on the run from a violent gang of organ harvesters... until Kray decides enough is enough.

There's a fantastic action sequence in We Will Not Die Tonight that takes place in a stairwell. Thanks to clever camerawork and editing, there's an idea of space and there's an order to all the chaos that's going on.

Unfortunately in this film these sequences prove to be the exception rather than the rule. Though well-choreographed, some sequences in We Will Not Die Tonight are difficult to parse, with no establishing shots to convey the space the film desperately needs. There are many schools of thought with regards to shooting action, and this fast-edit shaky-cam extreme closeup style is  frankly getting out of hand.

That said, when one can comprehend what is going on at any one time, the action is quite brutal and entertaining. It's interesting to note that this latest resurgence of Pinoy Action movies are led by women, and one can only hope for more films like this down the road. Erich Gonzales looks like she busted her ass off for this role and it shows.

For all its faults, I enjoyed We Will Not Die Tonight. It starts a bit shakily, but it takes off once fists start to fly. it's flawed but fun.

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