The squalor of Manila slums populated by high-school drug runners, then a chaotic precinct ruled by corrupt cops and even more corrupt chiefs -- these are the familiar turfs of Brillante Mendoza, the best-known Filipino filmmaker among international audiences.
In Amo, the first Netflix series from the Philippines, Mendoza once again plunges viewers into the lurid hellhole of the drug trade and blackmailing policemen. At 13 episodes, each running at bite-sized 25 minutes, the series has a distinct, raw Southeast Asian flavour that is different from the rest of the slick Netflix offerings, and while the debate over the director's stance on his president's controversial, bloodletting drug war will continue, Amo skirts the hot points and focuses instead on street-level kinetic action and crime noir elements. Entertainment over politics, as much as it's possible, that's the modus operandi.
Love it or hate it, Mendoza's signature style is unmistakable from the first few minutes: handheld camera, natural lightning, sweat and grime, documentary-style trips into shantytown alleys and cramped wooden houses where devious characters lurk. Slum porn this is not, but you can't say this is not sensationalism, either.
Amo begins by focusing on a teenage drug runner Joseph Molina (Vince Rillon), who would nonchalantly slip out of his high school at any time to make a delivery. The first few episodes detail the network of drug rings operated in this slum town -- where inhabitants can see the high-rises of Makati a dozen blocks away but also a world apart -- and Mendoza gives us doc-style staging of what we have lately seen in harrowing reports: police raids, murders (mostly by the gangs), wives wailing over the bodies of their husbands. We then learn that Joseph's brother-in-law, Bino (Felix Roco), is also a dealer working his way to expand the market into a posh nightclub. The family affair is tangled, since Joseph's uncle, Camilo (Allen Dizon), is a cop working on the anti-drug mission, and together with another tough cop Rodrigo (Derek Ramsay), they're working to bust a Japanese ringleader posed as a businessman. No spoiler ahead: let's just say -- like most parts of Southeast Asia -- that these cops aren't the pillars of integrity we expect them to be.
For those who've seen Mendoza's films before, all of this sounds like a repetition of what the director has done for at least a decade in feature films such as Slingshot, Serbis (a Cannes entry), Kinatay (which won him the best director prize at Cannes), and Ma' Rosa (which won Jaclyn Jose the best actress prize also at Cannes). In a way, Mendoza has crafted a distinctive style of cinema verite that has since influenced many other young Filipino filmmakers -- a kind of rough-edged, streetwise, working-class thriller in which everyone sweats, swears, runs, and struggles to survive to the point that they have no time to consider the sanctity of law or morality.
Amo is tightly written according to the rule of a multi-episode TV series. Each one begins with a prologue, a title, the main narrative, and it ends with a cliffhanger that nudges you to keep watching, even though you realise after a few episodes that it's the momentum of the story that keeps you going and not, as it should be, that you really care about any of the characters. There's also a group of gangsta-style rappers in every episode, where they function like a Greek chorus commenting upon the sordid adventures of Joseph, Camilo and Rodrigo -- as well as to keep the upbeat rhythm of the narrative. Amo serves as a lesson to other Southeast Asian filmmakers in how to aim for the global audience of Netflix (125 million and counting), because this is far from being a perfect show, but at least it's good enough to get picked up there on the menu.
As for President Duterte's war on drugs, one that has left thousands dead? Mendoza said in an interview earlier this month that the drug war is "necessary", yet he refrained from commenting further and preferred to let his movie speak for itself. Amo steers clear of politicising the issue at hand and tries to distribute guilt and sins squarely. The drug dealers are ruthless, and they execute their own people in cold-blood when circumstances require; in the second part of the show, we mostly follow the crooked cops (reminiscent of Mendoza's dark and disturbing Kinatay) and witness brutality that will make you cringe. One of them mentions that human rights groups are watching them and the international media have been critical of the violence, and the poster of President Duterte warning his citizens "Do Not Do Drugs" is plastered on the wall. But after all, you get a feeling that Amo, while certainly not propaganda, wants to put forth a different picture from the condemning reports of the deadly drug crackdown.
Season 1 ends with a cliffhanger in a crowded, lurid prison, with a ripe seed for more criminality to continue. President Duterte's term is six years (he has served two) and we can expect Amo to run just as long.
