Warning: Full spoilers below.
Neomanila has the uncanny ability to disorient. The film initially posits that in the underbellies of Manila, its inhabitants learn how to hold on to whatever light they can manage to get their hands on. It makes its audience believe that optimism is its endgame, that it is possible that underneath a cold-blooded killer there is still a heart — no matter how hardened it is — that has the ability to nurture, to care (think a Filipino take on Leon: The Professional). But just when the feelings start to get to you, just when all that warmth and fuzz start to creep in, Eula Valdez’ Irma— the hired gun we’ve grown a liking for — shoots Toto — the homeless teen she’s taken under her wing — point-blank right in the back of the head. Was this a subversion for the sake of subversion? Was this merely twist meant to leave its audiences gasping for air? I’d like to argue that Neomanila earned this redemption failure given the world it set itself in.
Let’s start with Irma. From the film’s opening scene — Irma executing a drug dealer in the middle of a busy marketplace — Neomanila establishes her character as a stone-cold killer. She is ballsy, confident to kill out in the open. Throughout the film we are also led to believe that her killings are not driven by a deeper motivation such as morality, she, in fact, even condones Toto’s being a drug runner. It’s seemingly just business for her, merely a means to gain a quick buck (note that both sentences use the words “led” and “seemingly,” we’ll get back to that later). She is also shown mostly lacking remorse: having sex after a kill, picking the freshly executed’s pockets, etc. By all means, the film sets her up as a morally reprehensible character. And yet we are consistently engaged in her story, she is even quite likable. Why is that? This is because we get to see another side to her, a deeper goodness within, and that is through her ability to nurture.
Enter Toto (Tim Castillo). Toto is homeless. He is an orphan. He lives on the streets and works as a runner for a gang of drug dealers. Despite these, his opening scene establishes him as loyal. He smuggles a razor blade for his older brother in lockup. He also tries to come up with the cash needed for his bail. Relative to his surrounding, Toto is mostly innocent. He is a survivor who just does what he needs to do to continue living. He may act tough but there’s still an aversion in his actions whenever he’s exposed to the horrors of Irma’s line of work. (Sidebar: The film shows Toto experiencing nosebleeds in situations he claims he is nervous in. Oddly, not once is this triggered during the executions he witnesses. He does though the two times it is implied that he is a potential target for execution. Toto may just have more nerves of steel than we are made to believe.)
Their paths intersect as Toto visits the marketplace where Irma executes the dealer in the opening scene (she is there paying her respects by the dead man’s makeshift candle memorial [I did say, “MOSTLY lacking in remorse”]). Soon, he is helping her and her partner evade the police and, eventually, he becomes a constant tag-along on their assignments to earn the extra cash needed for his brother’s bail. Irma grows attached to Toto. They form a motherly bond as even beyond these assignments, she begins to seemingly care for the teen: buying him new shoes, bonding with him over food and karaoke. Irma may not be able to steer Toto onto the path of righteousness but she may be able to set him on a guided path where he won’t go hungry as long there are people that need assassinating. There is a lot of heart between these interactions due in part to the commendable performances of Eula Valdez and Tim Castillo. This deeper goodness inside is what makes Irma a compelling character. Even though the reptilian violence she exhibits isn’t something we necessarily approve of, we are engaged and we still see her as a protagonist of the story.
By the time we get to the final act of the film, we have already been led to a point where we have grown invested in the bond Toto and Irma share. We begin to believe that a happy ending is possible for these two downtrodden characters that found each other….but then Irma shoots Toto. With Toto’s execution, we are forced to look back on two things: 1) how the assignment itself set premonitions of what was to come and 2) how the perceived affection that came from Irma’s character may have merely been a smokescreen for a more complex motivation that justifies her actions.
The assignment given was to get rid of a target described to fit the age and build of Toto. There is a foreboding tone in the scenes that preceded this sequence as compared to previous assignments. Omens are set in place to give an ominous weight to this last target: we see the wariness in Irma’s face as we hear the aforementioned description; Toto’s nose begins to bleed when he absorbs this piece of information for he too feels the fear of him potentially becoming the victim; a cat caught in a mousetrap also acts a visual metaphor for how the unsuspecting, the uninvolved, the unintended — just like the cat — can be the collateral damage in this kind of world. This reinforces Toto’s stance that there will always be victims in contrast to the insistence of his newfound partners’ that in their line of work there are no boundaries separating victims and suspects.
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Taking it back a bit further, with better retrospection, the little nuances of Irma’s actions also communicate a complexity to her motivations. Interspersed in earlier scenes are specks of her life before the film. We know that she and Toto’s mother knew each other from way back. It also seems that she’s affected way more than she’s supposed to be by the fire that killed Toto’s mother — referencing how Toto is the only one to escape unscathed. She constantly deflects questions about the whereabouts of her son. The clothes stashed in her house which she lends to Toto are also all surprisingly for his same build, much to his surprise. What’s most telling is the scene at a 7-11 where she is forced to abandon the child of a woman they just executed. There is hesitance and, ultimately, tears in her eyes as she leaves the baby behind. Yes, she may be a killer but she is also easily endeared and this just signifies that it is not foreign for her to project onto others the guilt and longing — those specific to a mother — we can assume she feels. All these hold deeper meaning when compounded. There are many clues left for us to confidently state that she is a woman filling the void left by a missing son. And by the time our thoughts are proven right, when we actually get to meet Elias — burnt disfigured and high out his mind — it’s not hard to see how she can treat Toto as a placeholder.
In the end, when she is confronted to make a choice between Toto, the placeholder, and Elias, her actual son, it is just the natural progression for her character to take the action that has the highest probability in securing Elias’ safety. Her experience as a killer and the instincts of a mother bear dead set on protecting her cub lead her to the calculated decision to shoot Toto. It was the pragmatic choice for her and a resolution well-earned based on the seeds planted into the film’s narrative.
In this final moments of Neomanila, we are shocked by the outcome but we are not meant to pass judgment on the characters. We feel sympathy for Toto as we pity the tragic conclusion of his story — relatively innocent but made to share the same fate as those deemed guiltier than he. This wasn’t what was meant for him and yet this became his final reckoning; he was collateral damage. For Irma on the other hand, we cannot sympathize with her but we can empathize with her and her actions. Given what we learn, we understand a more compelling character not just motivated by money but by the love for her son. This revealed motivation holds consistent from her earlier actions to her final act of killing Toto — a person we can assume she has also grown to love but not enough for her to pick him over her son.
Neomanila, by taking us closer to the characters, by making us both sympathize with Toto and empathize with Irma, makes us rethink our initial perceptions and prejudice on the kind of people involved in our country’s drug war. The film deepens our insights on the societal problems of our now “New Manila.” Our current political climate enables violence, desensitizing us and making us accept vigilante justice as a mere matter-of-fact that happens on our streets. Gone are the days when murderers have to burden themselves with the disposing of a body properly to get away scot-free. “Lagyan mo na lang ng karton!” —as the film would say — is now enough. Neomanila makes us see that the real problems are not characters like Toto and Irma. The greater culpability lies in a society that doesn’t just turn a blind eye on extra-judicial killings but state-sanctions and rewards it. Both Irma and Toto are byproducts of this; they are merely characters that find themselves in a world where the way to survive is to supply a demand, the demand of vigilante justice we ourselves clamored for during the last elections.
The film ends with a montage of actual news footage of EJK victims. There is a blurring of reel and real as Toto is inserted into the clips. We are meant to question what exactly separates Irma and Toto from the others, are they any different? Neomanila‘s is able to disorient because the redemption failure it showcases feels uncanny, we are brought to understand how relatable situations lined up can lead to this. Neomanila shocks because it exists, and it exists within a system where real-world characters in the place of Irma and Toto CAN be put into similar situations of where a mother has to make the decision of shooting an innocent in order to protect her own child, her child which she is rewarded to kill in the flawed notion that it is in the name of justice better served outside the rule of law.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk5YM1p7BhU
