Ang alamat ni FPJ

The second to the youngest member of the household, on first seeing the actor Fernando Poe Jr. in a movie shown on TV, remarked that she had thought the guy was mute.

"Ay, nagsasalita pala," she said, expressing amused surprise that the great FPJ talked, actually uttered some script in his usual mumbling style.

But this is not so much about FPJ, who like his best friend is such a fine ham of an actor – his Excellente, deposed President Joseph Ejercito Estrada – as it is about the recent filmfest with its predictable controversies making it all the way to the tabloid pages.

The truth, if truth be told, is that the recently reconstituted Film Ratings Board was asked to review three films in the past weeks: Mano Po, Dekada ’70, and the FPJ starrer, Alamat ng Lawin.

And while the top two movies, Regal’s Mano Po and Star Cinema’s Dekada have already been written to death by critics and observers alike, barely much has been heard about the FPJ flick, with its inclinations towards propaganda despite the Panday storyline rehash. Poe anyway has been widely rumored and cajoled to run in 2004, in a kind of revenge of the sub-literati, or at least the comeback of the mumbling society.

Anyone familiar with a Poe movie would attest to the guy’s drawing power. During the first weekend in January at the Megamall, a plain folks couple patiently waited in line to buy tickets to what they called in the old days as a double feature, and they decided on Mother Lily and If-pee-gee.

My own exposure to Da King has been limited mostly to San Miguel Beer commercials megged by Erwin Castillo, with the usual cameo appearances by Recah Trinidad, Pepito Aguila, and Danilo Dalena. Otherwise, almost none at all. The only FPJ I’ve ever watched was Agila, directed by Eddie Romero, which was of epic proportions if somewhat forgettable now many years after viewing.

How gracefully has Ang Panday aged after all these years, though in this latest incarnation he is known as Lawin, yet another underdog of a mythical land out of surreal Pinoy time. He is captive of the halimaws who converse in pigspeak, subalterns of a Darth Vader-like villain called Draka. The only way to freedom for Lawin out of this Mad Max-like state is to get help from four kids transplanted from modern-day Quiapo, who land on this weird planet in a deus ex machina way – they were running away from thugs after they witnessed a murder.

For leading lady, FPJ has Ina Raymundo, aka Camila, who is also being victimized by the halimaws who seem to have a run of the place. If James Bond has his own famous molls, so does If-pee-gee, whose partners get younger and younger as if to accentuate the hero’s celluloid agelessness.

Oh, there are the song and dance routines by the kids, quite boring and blasé, coming from the four supposed street children, only the eldest of whom looked authentically grimy (the other three looked too healthy and cute for tots raised in Quiapo’s mean streets).

The overall plot was like a veritable mishmash of storylines culled from Hollywood’s greatest fantasy blockbusters – from the aforementioned Mad Max and Star Wars to Excalibur and even the animation Road to El Dorado. As in most Pinoy movies, Alamat ng Lawin is a chopsuey of influences thrown into one big pot and made to simmer the FPJ way, with just enough salt of originality to taste.

Perhaps what is original here is, on part of the viewer, the search for clues and broadside hints of any political intentions, from the subliminal to the outright overt. We have the catchphrase of kalayaan, kapayapaan and katarungan of the endangered humans in halimaw country, which in English translates to the initials of the lead actor – freedom, peace and justice. And there is the inescapable parable of the captive hero at the start of movie, echoing the circumstances of the country’s most celebrated prisoner confined in a military hospital, surrounded by the oppressors who took his sovereignty away. If we’re looking for personification, consider the climax in the battle between Lawin and Draka, where the embattled hero is given supernatural support by his four small wards in the form of a collective force, at this instance represented as a Philippine flag which zaps into the wounded Lawin the renewed strength to fight back and defeat Draka and all that is evil in the parallel world.

Mentioning the ideological aside that Lawin was in fact the name of the task force headed in the ’90s by yet another presidential wannabe, Sen. Panfilo Lacson, might be stretching the propaganda bit too far, but in these days of instant myth and legends, one can never be too sure about the motives of filmmakers.

The kids would enjoy it of course, but if it’s a choice between Alamat ng Lawin and something like The Lord of the Rings – Two Towers, what chance does the Third World production have? FPJ, for all his noble bearing in his movies complete with pink long-sleeved shirt, may come across as patently dated. Some of the magic may be gone, yet he still has that quiet charm, a charm that makes his fists or his balaraw (sword) do the talking, just like a mute avenger in a silent movie.