Today I was drinking coffee and as I was changing channels on our cable tv, I stopped at PBO (Pinoy box office) which is a channel for Filipino movies only, and that they were showing this film “Gangland”. Two things about this movie by Gallaga and Reyes. First, the violence. There is plenty of it, and it involves boys in there teens, this movie poses an interesting challenge to ones senses. Second, how it was made. The movie is actually being covered by a television news crew, recording the events as they unfold. The movie has a lot to say about how we perceive violence and what the unrelenting media coverage of violence do to us.

The Story revolves around a bunch of kids or boys which come from families which might be called dysfunctional, though it seems presumptuous to label anyone this days. (Dysfunctional compared to what?) Kano- is being molested by his aunt, Orson’s family moved to America and left him with his grandmother, Dodge’s mother is a stripper, and Tinto-regularly beats the crap out of him by his older brother and his policeman father. It is in their barkada that they find the compassion and kindness they do not get from their parents; the barkada is their true family.

Highlight of the movie is that trouble erupts when the boys witness the shooting of the neighborhood drug pusher and run away with the merchandise. There attempt to be cool to take control of the situation, only gets them deeper in to trouble. They become the targets of a gang leader and his band of murderous young punks.

Violence follows violence, escalating into a mad killing frenzy. Teenage boys and girls are beaten, shot, stabbed, skulls bashed with baseball bats, one is decapitated by a sword. At first you cringe on the violence on the screen, you feel shock, horror, revulsion. The assault is unrelenting. After a while you feel……. nothing. You’re wiped out.

Two words describe life on the dying years of the twentieth century: Too Much. To much information. Too much technology. Too much sex. Too much violence. Too much entertainment. Overload! Overkill! Nothing shocks us anymore, we’ve been desensitized. The movie is horrific, disturbing, fascinating. No one leaves the theater unbruised.

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Luvfact: The phrase “often a bridesmaid but never a bride” actually came from an advertisement for Listerine mouthwash in 1925.

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