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The slums of some Filipino city:
Smalltime punk Richard (Felix Roco) is not yet 20 years old, but he’s already on the
hitlist of the City Death Squad, a (probably state-sanctioned) vigilante
group dedicated to ridding the city of crime by simply shooting dead all
crooks (even underaged ones). Richard wants to leave for Manila with his
girlfriend Jenny Jane (Eda Nolan), but lacking the money needed she has to moonlight
as a prostitute (like her mother) while he tries to make money from petty
crime and selling his own alcoholic father’s drugs. While he’s trying
to make the money though, he also has to see to it that his kid brother
Raymond (Daniel Medrana) doesn’t end up like himself and goes to school to have a beter
start in life – but Raymond has long ditched school and joined a gang,
the gang of Tomas (Zyrus Desamparado), who by the way is madly in love with Jenny Jane though
she’s not interested in him one bit. When Tomas learns that Richard
wants to leave town with Jenny Jane, he decides to get rid of him once and
for all, and using his own brother to do the dirty job, too. So he drugs
up Raymond, equips him with a machete, has Richard cornered and releases
Raymond on him … but that doesn’t work out as planned as Raymond still
has enough brotherly love left in himself despite all the drugs, and
ultimately, Richard shoots Tomas dead with his own gun. Then he tries to
convince Raymond to ditch his life of crime for good, as it would only
lead to his own death … but before he can get anywhere with his attempt
to make an honest man out of his brother, he is shot by one of the death
squad’s hitman – who then shoots Raymond as well, just for the fun of
it.
The last shot shows Jenny Jane
waiting at the pier where she was supposed to meet Richard, but nobody
comes to take her away from her life in the slums, which she ultimately
sees herself forced to return to …
Engkwentro doesn’t make the film sound like much, little more than
a clichéed juvenile delinquency flick, and the movie’s attempt to give
it some sociopolitical relevance by setting ist narration to a series of
political speeches on the soundtrack seems a bit too forced as well –
but all that said, Engkwentro
is aything but a bad movie, mainly because of its inspired diretorial
effort that tells the whole story in only a handful of long shots
including an extremely long (approx. 15 minutes) tracking shot at the
beginning which all give the film a dynamic all of its own, plus the film
shows an amazing eye for detail concerning life and conditions inthe
slums. Sure, all of this would work even better if the film was based on a
more original script, but even as it is it’s quite an interesting and
apart from that pretty entertaining (if a bit depressing due to its topic)
movie.
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