Writers-directors-producers Neill dela Llana and Ian Gamazon shot this microbudget thriller, steeped in hot-button issues of cultural identity, social responsibility and the roots of guerilla-style terrorism in the slums of Manila and nearby Cavite City. San Diego security guard Adam (Gamazon), a secular Muslim born in the predominantly Catholic Philippines, is eking out a living as a security guard and weathering a relationship crisis with his newly pregnant girlfriend (Dominique Gonzalez) when he gets a call from home: His father has been killed in a terrorist attack on a public bus, and Adam's mother and sister expect him to return for the funeral. But no one meets him at Ninoy Aquino Airport, and as he waits he hears a cell phone — not his — ringing inside his backpack. The caller (voice of dela Llana) informs Adam that his mother and sister have been taken hostage — there's a photo inside his bag to prove it — and that he can secure their release by following a series of instructions to the letter. The taunting caller warns that he can see Adam's every move, and dispatches him on the first leg of a journey that will take him through a nightmare landscape of desperately impoverished squatter camps, fetid garbage dumps, squalid slums, winding alleys, uncovered sewers and open-air markets. In what initially feels like some kind of nightmare course in cultural indoctrination, the thoroughly Americanized Adam is forcibly reacquainted with his Philippine roots, from local delicacies like balut — fertilized duck egg — to cockfights. But the caller has a more sinister agenda: He wants Adam to retrieve $75,000 that his father supposedly collected for betraying a Muslim revolutionary group, then plant a bomb in Manila's historic Quiapo Church. Gamazon conveys Adam's mounting panic and desperation with remarkable conviction, supported by dela Llana's jittery, handheld camera work and Ato Mariano's nervous minimalist score. Shooting without permits or crew, the filmmakers make assured use of what could have been liabilities, like the frankly puzzled stares of bystanders: The real-life presence of Gamazon and dela Llana in places where no tourists visit is clearly no less curious than the fictional presence of Adam. For all its topicality, the film is at heart a thriller, equal parts CELLULAR (2005) and FRANTIC (1988); it's easy to envision the big-budget remake, but hard to imagine a mainstream American production capturing the original's sour, sweaty immediacy. --Maitland McDonagh
