A Tricycle Driver Movie Review

 

One of the most prominent rotations of a medical intern is community medicine. In that rotation, students are sent to communities (sometimes remote, sometimes very far flung) in order to learn about the various ins and outs of the medical needs and public health concerns of the people living there. Of course, that didn't stop a few classmates and co-interns from spending a couple of nights drinking and having fun, especially towards the end of the rotation, but that's beside the point.

As the only two men in our block, my co-intern and I were both assigned to the farthest, most remote barangay, a small village with a population of a few dozen. next to a mountain. We took our shits in a makeshift outhouse, and we had to prepare water in advance if we had to go. (Because it's pitch black at night, we rarely went out after 7pm). Our one and only method of travel from the barangay to the rest of the municipality was by a 40 minute tricycle ride as walking was not a good idea unless you had a lot of time. Once or twice a week, we'd take the latter and meet up with friends or attend one of the required meetings with our advisers.

What I mean from that extended preamble is: tricycles are a fundamentally important part of transport in our country, specially in the Philippines, whether in rural or urban settings. Yet movies about them are exceedingly rare - I cannot recall one shown in the past decade, while even pedicab drivers had their own short film: Arvin Belarmino's (Tarang (2020))! In other countries, films about the workers who operate cheap public transportation are often framed as working class heroes or everymen fighting against societal conditions brought about by their class: India, in particular, has several films about rickshaw drivers, including the classic 1995 mass film Baasha, and one of my favorite films is Ajantrik (1958) about a talking taxi and the driver that loves it; Japan has films like Hiroshi Imagaki's The Life of Matsu the Untamed (1943); one of the main characters in Tony Bui's ode to contemporary Vietnam Three Seasons (1999) is a cyclo driver; China has Ling Zifeng's film adaptation of Rickshaw Boy (1982); and that's not counting endless documentaries showcasing such transport workers from Egypt to Thailand to everywhere in the world.

Tricycle Driver: Kasangga Mo now joins that pantheon, for better or worse. Directed in tandem (ha!) by Karlo Montero and Samuel Ibarra, the film is about a group of tricycle drivers doing tricycle driver stuff, and by tricycle driver stuff, I mean driving a makeshift ambulance, becoming stooges of the state apparatus, getting into firefights with illegal crime syndicates and helping stop a demonic possession. You know, just normal things tricycle drivers do. But ultimately it's not a film about tricycle drivers - it's about other working class people that aren't tricycle drivers. Confused? I bet. Read on and I'll explain.

The film is produced by Angel Film productions, whose opening logo is so shoddy that not only does it look like it was made 20 years ago, it also (most likely illegally) uses the last few seconds of the end credit music of STAR TREK FIRST CONTACT!

NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE EARS OF THE MOST HARDCORE STAR TREK FAN IN THIS COUNTRY. NEVER.

The film begins with Samuel "Sammy" Romero (Vin Abrenica) coming home from his work as a stuntman. Showbiz doesn't have a lot of work for him so he decides to go back to his wife and kid. Along the way, he is stopped by a bunch of would be robbers and he disposes of them by getting into a fistfight (mind you that the robbers are armed with at least one gun.) He wins because of course he does, and in the process confiscates the robbers' gun. Perhaps inspired (?) by these events, he decides to join his sister Rose Ann (Rose Ann Ibarra) and go back to his previous job as a tricycle driver. The next few scenes are about Sammy navigating local bureaucracy to regain the tricycle license that he had in 2013 and his sister getting scammed by someone who offered her a package in exchange for fare money.

People who've seen (or rather, heard) this movie will no doubt notice that the sound in this film is horrendous. The characters are dubbed worse than a Hong Kong English dub in the 1980's, with a sound quality on par with something recorded off Baby's First Microphone:

of course, that's actually a thing

In an out of left field sequence, Sammy's dad (Rogelio Yadao) comes home. He'd left the household for how many years because he cheated on his wife, and now he's back for some reason. Although the film doesn't tell us here in this scene, he's actually a cop. Sammy's dad talks with his family in a very emotional scene, and by "emotional" I mean having the emotional range of a loaf of bread. The actors seem to be emoting, but the dub delivers the dialogue like they were reading aloud a research paper on the multivariate quadratic challenges toward post-quantum generation cryptography. The dad is forgiven by the family (quite quickly, I may add) though he doesn't show up again until near the end of the film - his appearance is literally an afterthought, as if the writer wrote the film in reverse. 

I'd like to segue a little bit and discuss where and when this movie takes place. Based on the presidential picture and several campaign posters still posted to several homes, we can deduce that this was filmed sometime last year, near to or after the 2022 elections in May. In several establishing shots in the film "Davao City Hall" is seen in one of the buildings (at least, as clear as you can see as it looks like it's shot in 240p). The film has a mayor character and a governor character, which points to a provincial setting. HOWEVER, other incidental shots of the film are obviously in Quezon City, and I don't even have to look - "Quezon City" is clearly displayed in front of every tricycle in the film! Not to mention we can clearly see various political posters for local candidates for Quezon City positions! It goes without saying that the film is hilariously inept, but you've probably figured that out anyway.

Look at the writing on the tricycle. I'm just gonna call it Quevao City from now on

In this "Davao City Hall", the vice mayor is shown talking to a bunch of people played by "actors" who they probably just yoinked off the street. The vice mayor, in an effort to fight against rising crime rates, decides to recruit tricycle drivers and use them as police assets! There's a certain kind of twisted logic to his reasoning here: as tricycle drivers are exposed to all manners of people, they will likely be witness to any number of potentially criminal activities, and if they're used by the police, they can narc on their fellow citizens. This motion passes without protest from the rest of the staff, because fuck that. Meanwhile, Sammy and Rose Ann are then shown going on tricycle related escapades, such as delivering a baby. Yes, tricycle drivers are midwives now for some reason. Also, Sammy's fellow tricycle driver Aryong (Pekto) gets really drunk (it looks like they shot the scene at night) and goes out with his (equally drunk) friend in a tricycle with scenes clearly shot DURING THE DAY and crash on an electrical pole. I suppose their drunk tricycle driving caused them to travel near the speed of light, doing time dilation stuff and making them crash 12 hours later.

What comes next is a sequence where an old guy (Bobby Henson) visits the barangay captain's office. It's not entirely clear who he actually is (former cop? former gangster? is there a difference anymore?) but the people refer to him as "FPJ." He looks like an FPJ cosplayer, but other than his body language and costume he doesn't look anything like the guy. To be fair, his credits go all the way back to the eighties, with a lot of his 90s and 2000s roles being an FPJ stand-in. His only relevance in this movie is a subsequent scene of him geriatrically beating up a pair of extortionists like an emaciated, diseased Rocky Balboa.

Aryong makes up for his earlier drunken shenanigans (surprising that he wasn't arrested for it lol) by helping out a man who passed out while driving. He brings the man onto his tricycle and brings him to the hospital. Later on, the man's wife calls Aryong and thanks him for his help. She and the revived husband give him a hefty sum of money to do as he pleases. And what does he do with that moolah? Does he construct a new house? Fund a sari-sari store? Nope! He turns his tricycle into a double decker - the same double decker that you see in this film's poster. People line up to take a ride in it so I guess he made the right choice.

okay, it does look pretty cool

What happens next is one of my favorite moments of the film. Aryong's sister (I think?) is shown to be flailing around like a mad person, and that's apparently because she's being possessed by a demon. While Aryong holds her in place, the other people in the house call an Albularyo, who exorcizes the demon from her body. Is this relevant to anything else in the movie? No. Is the demonic possession ever brought up again? No. I guess tricycle drivers help stop demonic possession now, or maybe Satan and his demonic hordes saw what the movie was about and decided to drop the film like a hot potato. When both God and Satan have abandoned your film, you know some real shit's going on.

In one of the film's last "filler arcs" before we go to the meat of the story, we get another unrelated sequence where one tricycle driver returns a bag of lost cash and is accused of keeping the money for himself... while' he's in the barangay captain's office... just as he's giving the bag to the captain for safekeeping?? The funny part is, when all is resolved and the lady who lost her money apologizes for her accusations, she kinda starts flirting with the driver lol.

After an hour of the most random shit ever, we finally get to the main course. While his fellow tricycle drivers were delivering babies and bringing people to the hospital and holding their relative while they're being possessed by a demon, Sammy gets into a lot of fights. For some reason, being a former stuntman is attracting the local toughs like mosquitoes to the color blue. One of the goons who fights Sammy is a huge guy and he throws the poor ex-stuntman around. I guess random fights are part of the hazards of working as a tricycle driver. While Sammy does make up with that giant dude, Sammy gets into another fight with an older tricycle driver who I've never seen before. This guy pulls out a knife and apparently that's a no-no because all of Sammy's colleagues rush in to help him and give him a beating. The police arrive and arrest everyone for making a scene. I guess without half of its tricycle force, Quevao City citizens are going to have to make do with other sources of transportation.

Various people talk with the mayor about this incident. Since no complaints were filed, the majority of the tricycle drivers are free to go... except the older tricycle driver who picked a fight with Sammy. As it turns out, that guy is WANTED FOR KILLING TWO PEOPLE. So after a short musical montage where our tricycle drivers are hobnobbing with non-tricycle driver detainees, they are let go, except for double murder guy (his name is Montecristo).

This is Montecristo. I bet if you entered "Philippine Cinema 90's Criminal Goon" in an AI it would look something like this guy

Sammy's not been at home for at least a couple days because of his incarceration. and apparently news of his imprisonment hasn't reached his family members. He arrives to find his wife sleeping, and I guess to emphasize potential sexytime (and solidarity with Ukraine??), the filmmakers tint the whole frame blue, then yellow. Sammy's wife wakes up and is angry at her husband, accusing him of being unfaithful. Sammy truthfully says that he's been imprisoned, but wifey isn't having it. To prove his innocence, Sammy asks his wife to... smell his shirt?? Dude, in the first place, why would you want to do sexytime when you've been in prison for at least two days? Taka a bath first, you neanderthal! The "characterization" of most of the women in this film is pretty telling - wives who are tied to their spouses and forgive their husbands' indiscretions way too easily, paranoiacs, or the vessels of demonic possession. The only woman in the film who is in any way independent is Rose Ann, who is portrayed as a tomboy.

here's an example of that yellow tint I was talking about

The two make up off screen while various other things go on in the background:  the vice mayor continues to gain political power, visiting the tricycle drivers who were just freed. Aryong is involved in a pretty tasteless trans joke that would've been funny NEVER, tricycle driver police assets help bust what looks like a drug syndicate, and in a not-really unsurprising sequence, Montecristo and a dozen other criminals are broken out of prison by heretofore-unknown individuals. 

We soon learn who is responsible for the jailbreak: the soon-to-be (?) governor of wherever this place is -  a balding crime boss named Don Pepe (Bing Davao) and his stable of goons straight out of the nineties. Although it's implied he's dipped his toes into many different things (presumably including the drug thingy that tricycle drivers helped bring down) he's mostly concerned with illegal gambling operations, running an illegal casino out of someone's garage. As an aside, I found it pretty hilarious to have people all dressed up gambling in this place like it's some swanky joint from James Bond when it's literally just someone's garage. The police raid the establishment and one of the crime boss' lieutenants manages to escape. Don Pepe isn't too pleased and takes it up with the mayor. Apparently the two signed a covenant way back: Don pepe gets to do whatever he wants but mostly under the radar, while the mayor enjoys a (relatively) crime-controlled city. The attack on the casino is a violation of that covenant, so Don pepe begins to move against the mayor, though as we will see as the film nears its end, he doesn't think things all the way through.

Firstly, he removes the biggest threat to his grand schemes. Is it the police chief? The local military, maybe? NOPE! He springs a trap for all of the tricycle drivers under the guise of an award ceremony and imprisons them (sans Sammy) in his mansion. He then kidnaps the mayor (??) and tries to bribe him with 5 million pesos... but why kidnap him though? All that would do is put a giant target on the crime boss' head, because he's the only one with such a motive! While all of this is happening, Sammy's dad dies in a police operation and Sammy mourns his death via a montage of all the times we've seen the guy... which consists mostly of the guy getting shot by criminals lol.

basically this for 30 seconds lol

The police raid Don Pepe' house with a strike force that includes Sammy, who goes into the house dressed in police attire and armed with a gun and a baseball bat. Aside from all the other things tricycle drivers can do, apparently they can also get into firefights with criminals. Don Pepe is defeated, other tricycle drivers are freed, all is good. For reference, this shootout sequence was shot in Bocaue Bulacan, so we got establishing shots in Davao, shots for other sequences in QC, then this shootout scene in Bulacan. Talk about location shooting.

in case you think I'm lying, here's Vin Abrenica, tricycle driver, dressed in police attire with a baseball bat

The vice mayor then confronts the mayor about the covenant, telling him that he'll do everything to bring him down or something to that effect. Does the mayor get any repercussions for this? Does the vice mayor recruit the tricycle drivers to participate in a special recon operation to suss out the mayor's other criminal activities? Nope again! In the very next scene, we see police chief, Sammy and (if I recall correctly) the fucking mayor, LITERALLY THE GUY PARTIALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS IN THE FIRST PLACE being awarded a medal for... defeating the crime boss, I guess? The vice mayor is somewhere in there, but he doesn't say a goddamn word. I'd start pulling my hair out at this point but I was afraid I'd go bald.

The man who gives the award to these people is the ACTUAL governor of this place, played by none other than Karlo Montero (his nameplate here is Karlo M. Conge) in a cameo, almost like he's rewarding himself for doing such a good job. The mind boggles. After a few more unfunny jokes, the film ends. The hilarity doesn't end there as the credits are just as inept - for example, the credit for "script continuity" is spelled as "contenuity" because these boobs can't even get that right.

If the structure of the film feels similar to you - working class dudes doing outlandish things, eventually ending in a firefight and getting awards for their random shenanigans - you're on to something, because these are the same people that made Security Academy. And much like that film, this isn't really about tricycle drivers or security guards - it's about stuntmen and other film workers left by the wayside as Philippine cinema moved away from certain genres. This film was based on a true story and I wouldn't be surprised - Sammy the stuntman might be Sammy Ibarra, the other director of this film. If you look at the credits of the people who worked on this film, a lot of them go waaaaay back: Bing Davao, who played Don Pepe, has credits going all the way back to 1979 - the man's worked with everyone from Vilma to Dolphy; Domingo Zafe, who composed what little music this film had, has composed for films since at least 1980, for people like Carlo J. Caparas; a lot of the older folks are bit players who've acted in various, mostly tough guy roles since the eighties and nineties.

For many years, these people served as the backbone of a prolific industry. But times and tastes change, and the genres they worked in slowly gave way to more budget friendly genres. When FPJ died, the genre he was best known for likely drew its last breaths, and with it followed all of the other workers who supported that industry within an industry. The desire to reach out, to become something more than one's self (or at least, what the industry perceives them to be) finds itself in these two films: ordinary people becoming rich, becoming heroes, becoming the main character in the story of their lives - people who can deliver children without a medical or midwife license, get into firefights without a police badge or help exorcize demons without the blessing of some mountain spirit.

That's probably why one of the directors' responses to a "review" of his film felt so angry - films like this are his attempt to fight back an existential threat. Though undoubtedly inexperienced and technically inept in the art of filmmaking, I see films like this as an earnest, if misguided attempt to reclaim what once was. At the very least, I understand the motivations behind the creation of the film.

On the other hand, the implications of his statement in that response - that ridiculing films like his will cause international (specifically Hollywood) productions to completely eliminate Filipino cinema - are a reach. The threat of competition from other countries' films is not an excuse to watch a bad local film. Yeah it sucks, but them's the breaks - in the Darwinist system we're currently in, local films are at a disadvantage. All sorts of mediocrity or outright garbage - unless there's something there to appeal to some audience - will inevitably be ignored. Sadly, that means some real gems get caught in the crossfire too. I don't know if there's a solution to that other than outright stubbornness, so points for trying I guess. Thanks for reading.