Many Filipinos will be familiar with the Revilla clan of actors. They are, in a sense, acting royalty: Ramon Revilla Sr., former action star, will probably be fondly remembered for having a shit ton of children. Ramon Revilla Jr., also former action star, is currently known for being in prison for corruption, and making a cheesy ass music video about it. Now, the third generation of Revillas are out to make a mark in the local movie scene with the anthology movie, Tres. The film is composed of three separate unrelated stories which all have a character trying to hide a secret. The ultimate result: to be honest, kinda meh.
The first story is Virgo, featuring eldest Revilla brother Bryan Revilla. In this movie, Revilla is a cop out to avenge the death of his family. He decides to do this by going Death Wish on his targets, but like if Charles Bronson looked like Mikey Bustos with facial hair. It plays out like a generic 90's action film, but in fast forward, the running time unable to bear the weight of the narrative. It even has Carla Humphries as the love interest, though she is relegated to the sidelines in hysterics as her bald yet handsome leading man mows down scores of people with a rifle that doesn't seem to run out of ammo. Fantastic. Republicans everywhere would be proud. To be fair, near the end there's a clever visual callback to Amorsolo's version of Michael Vanquishing Satan (you know, the painting that's in every bottle of Ginebra), but that's the only praise I can heap upon this short.
The second story, Amats, actually has an interesting story arc to it. It stars Luigi Revilla as a kid who gets roped into the illegal drug trade by a mysterious woman (Assunta De Rossi.) But the film doesn't really have a point, thanks to a very rushed ending. It's a movie that seems to support the narrative that drug addicted people who want to change are doomed to fail, or maybe not. It's hard to tell. Also, apparently drugs enable people to do sick martial arts and kick ass. So maybe the point of the movie is to do drugs because it'll turn you into a cool badass? This is probably the most watchable of all the three shorts, though that's not saying much.
The third and final story, 72 hours, takes place in an alternate Earth where one time it's pitch black, then two hours later the sun is high up in the sky like it's noon. It's an alternate earth where a trained and experienced drug enforcement agent shoots a shotgun at a car that is quite far away from the gun's effective range. Also, seconds seem to count down faster in this version of Earth. The main antagonist in this film is a Chinese drug lord (Albert Martinez) who knows kung fu, probably thanks to drugs. He's being tracked down by the combined efforts of the PDEA and the PNP - in this case, a wily PDEA agent (Jolo Revilla) paired up with a spunky police girl (Rhian Ramos). I was excited to see Ramos in an action role, but she really doesn't do too much in this film in terms of action, and her character seems to be just another accessory character for the macho male protagonist to be sad about. Shame. Other than that, the action is a little too silly for my taste, with a bunch of flipping cars and exploding helicopters. I guess this is the kind of movie my father would like.
Would I watch Tres again? Nope. I guess the people involved had fun doing it, and I'm fine with that, as long as it doesn't interfere with, say vice-governing Cavite. Best movie ever, two punches to the dick over four. -IGN
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