Cavite

So two guys wrote up a script, bought a digitial camera and a couple of tickets to the Philippines, and set out to make a movie. They called it CAVITE.

CAVITE has a workable premise: a man is forced to do accede to a criminal's wishes to saave his family. The twist is that the criminal is an Abu Sayyef terrorist, the man is a secular Filipino muslim, and the setting is Cavite, a city somewhere near Manila. It's a reasonably effective, though shakily shot, thriller. Its protagonist wins our sympathy, its antagonist seems brilliant and effective, and the picture goes through all the paces of the modern thriller.

Unfortunately, CAVITE isn't particularly thrilling. We can see what it's trying to do, and we can pity it for not quite succeeding. Its protagonist, while sympathetic, isn't comopelling. it antagonist, while brilliant and effective, is supernaturally so. Think of CAVITE as a particularly good student film or fun project, and you may enjoy it. Approach it with the standards you'd apply to a professional trail, and you'll probably come away disappointed.