This indie effort is a rare road movie

Of all the movies presented in the current Manila Film Festival, Utang Ni Tatang captures the spirit of the independent film movement. Its budget is shoestring; it carries the filmmaker’s personal style and vision; the production values are rough and cutting-edge (the negatives have been subjected to a certain bleaching process that results in a kind of pale, high-contrast images, like fading photographs); the narrative construction may be out of the ordinary (it tackles a subject that veers from the usual mainstream fare); and it has little or no star quality (but in their stead are more serious thespic talents).

The feature film debut of two-time Urian awardee for Best Short Film, Jon Red (the brother of internationally known and Cannes-winning Raymond Red whose feature film credits are Bayani and Sakay), Utang Ni Tatang follows the misadventures of a gang hungry for vengeance. It is a rare road movie in which the road seems to lead nowhere and the characters are constantly moving about, moving on, and – their patience thinning out and their spirit continuously eroded – giving up or getting at one another.

There is some Tarantino-like violence in the introduction before the opening credits, a moment in which the movie will return near the end. The story begins when the characters, leading a colorless, humdrum existence and ostensibly mellowed and tamed by the passage of time, is stirred back to action by an old friend who tells them that a certain Tatang has been found, a vaguely- identified ageing person who owes them a great deal – something like maybe time or life?

After the first part which deals with their recruitment (or reorganization), the reunited buddies head for "war" like cowboys in an American western, or draftees in a war movie. The hunt for Tatang will test their wills and determination, their team spirit and their individual spirit, although it is still not crystal-clear what Tatang owes them, really. This isn’t a meaningful indie film if along the way, the characters do not discover anything new or significant about themselves or their goal, or break down in some momentous way, so these are precisely what will happen.

They talk, they argue, they quarrel, they expose their angst, they ask questions. And it’s all intended to be a comedy – a very dark one, too. The actors fit their roles like gloves, and Joel Torre, Jeffrey Quizon, Jaime Fabregas as Tatang, and Mylene Dizon have their good moments.

These actors aside, it may be said that while other movies recruit the most beautiful stars in local showbiz, Red seems to have done just the opposite. It’s as though he has gathered the least attractive or the most menacing actors in the industry. the mild-mannered, friendly-looking Torre may prove to be the exception, as well as Maricar de Mesa and Dizon, but even Torre is shown early in the movie walking toward the camera, his legs in unsightly close-up, while Dizon, a sexy, mysterious lady in a house, suddenly picks her nose and talks with a thick provincial accent.

Sad to say, the movie is less funny than it sounds. Even sadder is the obvious fact that most of the time, the characters are running in the wrong direction – or in no direction, and while that may be the filmmaker’s point, the audience is beginning to feel they are in the same dilemma. "What’s going on?" the more impatient would cry out. There is a lesson here. What the movie could say in 30 or 40 minutes, it says in something like two hours. It is the same old complaint against first-time directors of feature-length films, especially those who used to work in the short film format.

Red is a highly-talented filmmaker, judging from his short films and his previous full-length, digital work. In spite of the failures of Tatang, there is a bright future for inventive and daring filmmakers like him. He should go on, continue to learn and experiment, and keep the indie spirit alive.