Ang Katiwala

Ang Katiwala

Quick Review: 'Ang Katiwala' (2012)Meant — rather explicitly — as a propaganda for the late President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines Manuel L. Quezon, Aloy Adlawan’s Ang Katiwala (The Caretaker), makes for a convoluted debacle of an assortment of ideas that are never entirely developed.

The scripting is weak. It finds an illiterate family man who accepts a side job to care-take an ancestral home in Manila. Forced to leave his family behind, Ruben (Dennis Trillo) has to spend days upon days in solitude; with only books and historic recordings to keep him occasional company.

Where appreciatively expositive of Quezon’s legacy, Ang Katiwala doesn’t explore–at least to an engaging extent–Ruben’s increasingly alarming psyche, which is something Adlawan clearly so studiously sets up in the film’s first half. Instead he opts for a bloody (and preachy) conclude — you know, just in case you are the type to not pick up on things too easily — which indeed is a total shame. I believe Trillo can be an effective actor giventhe right material (not something so that Bianca King would whine on valid film criticism thru her Twitter account) that will promote him from mere filmic fixture or instrument to a real, living and breathing character.

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