Janus Nolasco
*This review contains spoilers.
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The violence from the Philippines’ War on Drugs reached a scale that inexorably shaped Philippine cinema. Until recently, the Filipino action film, or even the political thriller, had virtually disappeared. Both had been supplanted by, among other genres, a flurry of romance movies. But the last six years or so has seen a revival of such films: Neomanila, Double Barrel, Buy Bust, Smaller and Smaller Circles, Babae at Baril, just to name a few.
On the Job: The Missing Eight (2021) from director Erik Matti belongs to this broader phenomenon. The sequel to On the Job (2013), The Missing Eight charts the transformation of the journalist, Sisoy Salas (John Arcilla), from a subservient, propolitician hack to a full-fledged reporter bent on exposing the crime of his patron, Mayor Pedring Eusebio (Dante Rivero). The crime in question is the murder and disappearance of the eponymous “Missing Eight,” which includes Sisoy’s fellow reporter, Arnel Pangan (Christopher de Leon) and his eight-year-old son.
Pangan had angered Mayor Eusebio through his (Pangan’s) hard-hitting reports in the local newspaper. Their disappearance does a 180 on Sisoy, who gradually abandons his pro-Eusebio leanings and eventually finds a way to extract a confession from the mayor. In doing so, Sisoy seeks to bust the politician’s image as a crime-buster.
The Missing Eight also charts Sisoy’s difficult investigation, and his dilemma between toeing the line of his patron and pursuing the truth at great, personal cost. It also devotes much screentime to prison life and the assassinations that the inmates (and others) carry out. Dealing with the venality of the political elite, fake news, and the role of the media ethics, among other issues, the film is blatantly engagé, its resonance to contemporary Philippine politics undeniable.
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The Film as Journalist and Ethnographer
Like the Filipino action films of the 1980s and 1990s, The Missing Eight is essentially an exposé of Philippine politics, portraying in graphic fashion the violence it engenders. In several scenes, the film uses long, uninterrupted camera work (i.e. no cuts) to depict, among others, the cruelty and chaos of prison life. At times, it uses popular songs alongside particularly bloody sequences like executions, but only succeeds in driving the brutality even harder.
At over three hours long, split into four episodes now streaming in HBO Asia, the film has more time to slow down. It can afford to get into all sorts of details and episodes, and has more room to exhibit its technical virtuosity, from sound and cinematography to editing and lighting.
In its to-the-second realism, the film itself, not just Sisoy, is also a journalist. It discloses not only the truth of the murder, but also, more importantly, the “truth” of Philippine politics, giving it several faces, albeit fictional but no less frightening ones.
Similarly, if The Missing Eight is an exposé, it is also an ethnography of sorts. It offers an immersive, detailed glimpse of the darker aspects of Philippine life that many will not otherwise see. How many have actually witnessed executions? The obscure backroom dealings of politicians? Most importantly, how many, when faced with such realities, often choose to look the other way?
From this vantage point, it is easy to appreciate why (social) realism—and its focus on the seamy, hidden side of Philippine society—is the preferred genre of resistance in the country’s cinema. In an era of fake news and falsified narratives, the in-your-face realism of films like The Missing Eight is more vital than ever.
In the same way, when one considers its disappearance from Philippine cinema, the re-emergence of the action movie/political thriller cannot be more timely. For all their faults, the Filipino action films of the late 20th century had a favorable feature: they were a constant reminder who the villains were.
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One-Fourth Resistance, No Follow-Through
The Missing Eight is a scathing indictment of Philippine politics. This in itself is not unusual. What’s more striking is less its graphic, in-your-face portrayal of violence than its relatively muted response to such violence.
It is true that Sisoy bravely and admirably goes all-out in his confrontation with Mayor Eusebio; just before Sisoy does so, it had seemed that he was about to sacrifice himself and die. But without taking anything away from him, his intention—to expose the mayor via Facebook Live—also reeks of “bahala-na” desperation, but understandably so (he couldn’t get hard evidence).
Several reviews do not think much of the resolution. “His (Sisoy’s) eventual transformation into a reluctantly gun-toting, Facebook live-streaming survivalist revolutionary,” writes Keith Uhlich, “is pure fantasy.” For Jason Liwag, the film’s “narrative culmination is a little outlandish,” though Hugo Yonzon IV says that it was “tempered with a minute injection of hope,” which “really isn’t much, but it’s more than we get on a daily basis…”
The cynicism is obvious, but The Missing Eight is marked by this very same skepticism. The film is all too aware of the problem it faces, but it does not really go for a clear, unambiguous resolution, either. Will and should the mayor be convicted? Will his media person be able to spin the revelations? Will they seek to discredit Sisoy? At least, though, he never kills off all the villains the way action heroes did in the 1980s (though that certainly meant a more definitive outcome).
Today, open-ended endings can be chalked up to a jaded outlook; unadulterated happily-ever-afters are out, even in romance movies. At any rate, the lack of follow-through seems to have been deliberate. “This time,” shares Direk Erik, “we end things just like in real life – there is a lot of unfinished business.”
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Intentional or otherwise, The Missing Eight’s graphic, unambiguous representation of Philippine society contrasts with its tentativeness to follow through on Sisoy’s exposé. Said to be Direk Erik’s “angriest” production, the film devotes much care and screentime to stage the violence, but is less certain over the aftermath of Sisoy’s decisive act. The film wants to resist, and it certainly does. Yet it is nevertheless marked by an uncertainty over the next step. We’re left wondering what will happen as Sisoy drives out of town in the final scene. Bitin, even after three hours.
Mayor Eusebio’s unwitting confession gives the narrative some momentum, but then it tapers off somewhat. At the point of no return, and driven by a sense of finality, Sisoy invites Roman, Sisoy’s informant and inmate-hitman, “Let’s finish this.”
But Roman simply walks off to go home to his mother, and just falls by the wayside due to his injuries. This after killing all his fellow hired goons. Clearly, this is a not a resistance born from the greater good, but the same could be said of Sisoy too. He invokes the general principles, but he only fought against the mayor after Ariel and his colleagues were murdered.
Indeed, Sisoy’s very resistance is compromised at its core. Mayor Eusebio (or the film) knows this, calling him only a “one-fourth” journalist during the confrontation. More importantly, Sisoy could have done what he did only because he was still “in” the rotten system, enjoying the favor and protection of the mayor.
Anyway, with Sisoy’s call to end things once and for all, one at least hopes for a sequel. But over year since its release, the series creators apparently do not have any immediate plans to carry on Sisoy’s story. Instead, they have opted for a prequel that will detail the rise to power of Mayor Eusebio. So there is no envisioning of what a post-Eusebio landscape might look like. Assuming that will come to pass.
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Resistance in a Time of Cynicism
If The Missing Eight does not tackle the aftermath, it could easily chalked up to a lack of time. But with over three hours of screentime, it could have easily done this. Thus, the lack of follow-through can arguably be traced instead to the limit of the film’s politics. This is not a diss, a wish that it could or should have been more radical: how it could have avoided showing how a broken system can be undone only from the inside.
On the contrary, the lack of follow-through is arguably a poignant illustration of a dire political predicament: the lack of a formidable opposition, and a cynicism and relative powerlessness against an enduring system, which must nevertheless be resisted. Yet it is also so intractable that it also shapes the very resistance (and the portrayal thereof) that it generates, limiting the extent by which one could imagine a life beyond it.
In this light, Mayor Eusebio’s “one-fourth” comment, which seems unnecessary, is very telling. A line important enough to be uttered twice, it is directed not just against Sisoy, but also against the film itself. The message is clear: Sisoy’s (if not the film’s) resistance is incomplete or inauthentic.
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A Zeitgeist?
To be fair, many other recent productions share this conviction to resist, while tentatively pushing back as well. In Fuccbois, the two protagonists manage to kill, albeit in a messy, unplanned encounter, a powerful mayor (a strike against the political elite), but the ending has them simply fleeing, like Sisoy. Similarly, in Babae at ang Baril, the heroine manages to reject violence, specifically the eye-for-an-eye ethos, despite being brutalized herself. She throws away the gun, but that is that.
In Aswang, the violence of the political order is “metaphysicalized” into an unseen, malevolent force whose fearsome brutality is foregrounded, but only at the cost of turning it into an otherwordly, unreachable, if not unstoppable entity altogether. It is hard to fight against an enemy like that.
These are randomly selected films, but they seem to hint at a pattern. They arguably take off from a climate of cynicism and relative powerlessness, while seeking to resist and transcend it all the same. They can only score little victories and take small steps, for the moment at least. But these, along with The Missing Eight’s international accolades, must be appreciated still, if only because they face unpropitious political conditions.