No better way to commemorate this election year in which an actor and a boxer are running for president, than to watch an Erap action movie. The copy of this film that's on YouTube is horrendous, but it is still barely watchable if you grew up watching pirated films anyway. (Thank you to the uploader, though! Doing god's work.)

It's okay, as far as crime dramas go. Cesar Gallardo really puts the focus on Geron's community, and the honor code that they operate by—which they also want to make sure the kids break out of, which I thought was interesting. But the discrimination that the poor experience in this film doesn't come across as very institutional in nature. Their plight is reduced to these random character-caricatures being really mean to Geron and his friends. I just think it's too easy. And it doesn't help that Geron is deified as this tough but decent heartthrob, who literally never gets punched in this movie, even across the handful of (admittedly impressive) fights he gets into. That's already shoddy action storytelling 101, and it's made worse by knowing that these kinds of relatable, morally righteous, but hollow characters are probably what allowed Erap to become so popular and so corrupt—and what enables somebody like Isko Moreno (or Robin Padilla) to believe he isn't just going down the same path. I would love it if no Filipino actor gets involved in politics ever again. This shit is embedded in our history, and it's embarrassing.