Paul Soriano's highly celebrated Manny Pacquiao biopic Kid Kulafu solely focuses on the National Fist's childhood, from his humble beginnings in the breathtaking mountainous regions of Bukidnon up until his first amateur boxing competitions— a foreshadowing of a promising career in the sport.
The film boasts of glorious, artful and intimate cinematography and excellent editing, providing a deep sense of time and place. Each scene is visually rich, exuberant, confident and inspired, instantly engaging the viewer into a visually superb experience.
What the movie provided aesthetically, though, lacked in emotional engagement, as most of the characters, including Pacquiao himself (Buboy Villar), despite their natural performances, are superficially portrayed. The film lacks substantial dialogue and strong character personalities that would have given us a deeper relationship with the main players. Pacquaio's meltdown after the death of a friend, for one, did not emotionally connect because the friend is a complete stranger to you.
The delightful exceptions to this, however, are Alessandra de Rossi's candid, humorous, and temperamental Dionisia and Cesar Montano's drunk boxing fanatic Tiyo Sardo, both entertainingly nuanced and character-driven. The rest just provided us with an image, including Pacquiao— focusing on the physical rather than the heart and soul of a great athlete.
Too much value is placed on cinematography and editing that the film somewhat neglects the very essence of what makes a motion picture emotionally engaging: powerful storytelling. Yes, the film is highly clear and straightforward and simple in its biographical depiction, but the absence of developed characters and substantial details eventually make the film fizzle in the second half, until it becomes tedious and boring, devoid of stress, excitement, drama or fear.
The numerous fighting scenes are all the same; no sense of threat and excitement because all the opponents are faceless and portrayed insignificantly, like you're watching a high-quality music video, with a film score very much resembling the soundtrack of Bennett Miller's sports drama Moneyball, particularly "This Will Destroy You" by The Mighty Rio Grande.
The numerous fighting scenes are all the same; no sense of threat and excitement because all the opponents are faceless and portrayed insignificantly, like you're watching a high-quality music video, with a film score very much resembling the soundtrack of Bennett Miller's sports drama Moneyball, particularly "This Will Destroy You" by The Mighty Rio Grande.
Kid Kulafu has its sparkling moments, like the powerful line that knocks you down with its hard truth: "Mas masakit ang buhay kaysa boxing," and the clever sequence when Dionisia is praying for Pacquiao. But in its entirety, despite its outstanding visual artistry, the movie's value is mostly on the surface—the visuals and the music, and the technical excellence—that you feel like you're watching a high quality advertisement, a brand, an image, rather than a human being.
2.5 out of 5 stars
Opens April 15, 2015 in Philippine cinemas
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