THE LOOKOUT
Philippines, 2018, 105 minutes, Colour.
Andres Vasquez, Jay Garcia, Elle Ramirez, Yayo Aguila.
Directed by Afi Africa.
This is quite an intense Philippines thriller. It is both complex and complicated in plot.
The central character is a young gay man who is employed as a hitman, able to commit his killings in broad daylight, disguises, weapons in bags… The film opens with a corrupt judge and a media celebrity arguing about money in a street and, a glamorous woman walking by; they are both murdered.
It is difficult to work out who is engineering the murders. There is the police chief, impatient, with a special squad, hand-picked, who are investigating the killings. The head of the group is a young woman, Monica, also intense, who sees the head of the office as Dad, a father figure. It emerges later that she has some allies in the group but also two who are in the pay of the leader and betray her.
The hitman goes to a lavish centre called The Kingdom where some young men are lined up for his approval – he chooses one, begins a relation with him although the young man seems reluctant but financially dependent on the work. He is intended as an apprentice to the killings.
As with quite a number of Filipino films, there is a very strong gay subtext.
Then there are flashbacks to an impoverished mother trying to bring up two children, a boy and a girl, continually brutalised by their uncle. The mother eventually sells them to get money to support the uncle, always regretting it, with quite a long scene of close-up in her howling grief. Then she becomes blind.
It emerges that the hitman is her long lost son, brutalised by a wealthy man and sodomised, adding to his traumas and his poverty in growing up. But he also searches for his lost sister.
The man who sodomised him is also a powerful presence wanting vengeance on a political rival. He has lost touch with his son.
It all builds up to a climax, the death of the police leader, the desperation of Monica, the young apprentice escaping with the hitman and going to the countryside – where, it is revealed, that the hitman knew all the time that his apprentice was undercover. He is also the son of the brutal authority who is taken, also sodomised by the traitors in the police squad, then shot.
There is a confrontation between the hitman and his apprentice, the hitman wanting to die less painfully but looking at someone he loved, the apprentice shooting him. After his death, his blind mother comes with the police escort and grieves again. And, just as we might have suspected by this time, Monica turns out to be the long-lost daughter.
The film has its graphic sexual moments but has more than its fair share of brutal moments.
Supported by the Cinemalaya Independent Film Foundation as one of the 10 finalists for 2018.
