Brillante Mendoza's Tirador (Slingshot) is an ambitious film about a mosaic of interconnected characters in the slums of Quiapo. It follows much the style of Babel where the characters are interconnected and their story intertwined, but unlike Babel, Tirador doesn't have a unifying device. In Babel, it was the gun, in Tirador, there was none. Shot mostly hand-held, the images were gritty, raw and tense.
The color, mostly muted and sepia-ish, gives another interesting look of the film. It doesn't really have a main protagonist, which made me less attached to the movie. I believe the main character was the town of Quiapo itself, a district of Manila.
As the characters traverses the labyrinthine bowels of the slums, we get a glimpse of the characters' lives as they go on with their life of poverty, violence and misfortune. The holy week setting mirrors Christ's hardship as its citizens face its daily crosses to survive.
I must admit, though I spent most of my childhood years in Quiapo, I didn't get to witness the dark side that this film portrays. These areas were mostly avoided and ignored, if you don't want to get yourself in trouble. Having seen it again, fused with shocking and gratuitous exaggeration of violence and nudity, I can't help but feel sad for the place.
Sure, some would argue its reality, but there is a fine line between being real and graphic. I am all for realism but sometimes, exercising artistic license doesn't translate you'll be vulgar but it is an avenue and opportunity for an able director to use this right and exercise restraint. I believe the filmmaker went for the gratuity for shock effect, thinking (IMO) these will awe audiences abroad (which is its targeted audience making the film inaccessible to the local patrons.)
As it ended, I didn't really feel anything, sure the style, esp. the photography was astounding, and it was able to sustain the tone up to the end, but as it fades out when that guy picks off that wallet from an unsuspecting devotee of a prayer rally, I felt that it just came full circle and didn't give much of a resolution.
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