Rudy’s action extravaganza

Local movie observers were wondering what caused the demise of the action movie genre. A clarification: it didn’t die. Action buffs are just more selective now. The recent FPJ action drama Batas ng Lansangan fared well at the box office. So has the more recent Bong Revilla thriller Kilabot at Kembot. Now the new Rudy Fernandez action extravaganza Diskarte is doing great at the current Manila Film Festival.

These pictures use the conventional action formula: fire and blood, romance and suspense, daring pursuits driven by betrayal and vengeance, plotlines populated by networks of goons and drug lords (and in the case of Diskarte and Kilabot, sexy, striptease dancers), and the obligatory slambang fight scenes.

They also offer something more–or new. These may not be as obvious as eye-popping female nudity, for in FPJ’s movie, there is none, there the difference being a subtle one–his fatherly character is a more human, down-to-earth hero.

In Diskarte, the sex element is more pronounced. Ara Mina and Karen Montelibano as sisters and sexy dancers in a club, disrobe, move about and chat in the dressing room with little or no clothes, seemingly unaware of their shapely physique.

But that’s merely for starters. Once the action gets going, the viewers are overwhelmed with the movie’s high production values (editing by Francis Vinarao is appropriately fast-paced, lighting and cinematography by Jun Pereira complement the movie’s menacing, cynical tone), and the story, which focuses on Rudy, a former Marine who is just out of jail.

He may not be your typical squeaky clean hero – he kidnaps a little girl and is bewildered when the smart tyke confronts him in captivity – but he is a good guy who makes no bones about his opposition to drug pushers. Like you and me, he has his weaknesses. Such gray areas in his characterization make the challenges that keep pounding him more formidable and intriguing.

As the embattled hero continuously bruised and besieged, Rudy delineates another shaded character, one of his finest roles. Ara Mina isn’t a mere warm body; she’s flesh and blood and is always in tune and in touch. Rudy is backed by standard heavies, four of them Urian-award-winning actors namely Joonee Gamboa, Menggie Cobarrubias, Tirso Cruz III, and John Arcilla. Tirso stands out right from his first appearance to his comeuppance, but Joonee as Rudy’s reclusive rescuer and co-fighter Ka Esteban has his own moments.

These characters are divided into the following: 1) Rudy’s team, which outwits a drug lord but is betrayed by one of the boys and is soon massacred save for Rudy and the traitor; 2) the drug lord (Roy Alvarez), his sexy girlfriend and henchmen; 3) a Narcom agent (Cobarrubias) and his subaltern who is that sexy girl’s real boyfriend (Emilio Garcia); 4) the police represented by Col. Confesor (Cruz III); and 5) another pair of law enforcers (Archie Adamos and Arcilla) whose motive is quite mysterious at first.

To make some of these characters more interesting and original, director Edgardo "Boy" Vinarao and scriptwriter Humilde "Meek" Roxas endow them with some very human traits. The police colonel is a tough law enforcer but a tender and ideal father to his little girl (in real life, how many "ideal" and respected family men are in fact corrupt public servants and unscrupulous professionals?). The paranoid Cobarrubias, constantly bothered by the butterflies in his stomach, runs to the bathroom at the mere thought of Rudy closing in on him (think of his condition when that prospect really happens).

During the final battle scene, staged as grandly as the operatic aria which the frustrated orchestra director Ka Esteban makes believe he is conducting (from Mozart’s Magic Flute), all hell breaks loose. Story ends on a note that is both sunny (literally, the setting being a luxury resort) and dark. What the movie is saying in effect is that there are no absolutely clean good guys in our midst, only good guys with some dirty hands.