Kid Kulafu starts out with the young Manny Pacquiao (played by Buboy Villar for majority of the film) still living in a small town caught up in the conflict between the army and the NPA. The film dedicates its opening minutes to sketching out the rhythms of a life lived in the middle of this conflict, with both rebels and soldiers making unannounced visits to their homes expecting aid and comfort, all culminating in a violent clash that finds Manny and his family ducking bullets and clinging to their lives. It is potent, dramatic stuff, and then it is never mentioned in the movie again.
Kid Kulafu continues on like this, moving from one dramatic situation to the next without really weaving it all together into a single coherent tapestry. The film doesn’t seem very interested in telling a story. It functions more like a commercial, its efforts directed towards creating memorable imagery that sells a particular brand. In this case, the film is selling the legend of Manny Pacquiao, a man who rose out of several difficult situations to become one of the greatest boxers in the world. It’s kind of an intriguing approach, but it’s hard to say exactly if it makes for effective cinema.
The film is basically plotless. There are a lot of things that happen, but they feel disjointed. The film never focuses enough on anything to be about any one particular thing. Right after the whole NPA thing, we cut to Manny in school with his brother, making eyes at a girl before getting picked on by bullies. Nothing that happens in this sequence matters to the narrative as it goes on. It could have been removed, and the net effect would be the same. But it adds to the iconography of Manny as the champion of the downtrodden.
And so Manny is taken under the wing of his uncle (Cesar Montano, whose excesses are channeled wonderfully), who teaches him to box in between bouts of drunkenness. Manny deals with his mother’s failing health. Manny joins an underdog team of boxers. Manny suffers the harsh conditions of training as an amateur in Manila. In the final act, Manny suddenly forms a bond with a boxer we don’t really know very well, setting up a completely different dramatic arc for the final minutes of the film.
To its credit, the film manages to make all this look pretty good. Director Paul Soriano, a veteran of the advertising industry, puts together a really nice commercial. There are a lot of great images in there, suggesting drama even when the script doesn’t fully support it. Crisp cinematography from Odyssey Flores highlights the generally excellent production work. The acting is uniformly strong. Buboy Villar has consistently been one of the best things in the movies he’s in, and he proves to be a strong center for this film. Alessandra de Rossi leaves a strong impression as Dionisia Pacquio, grounding the character in spite of the scattershot scripting.
Kid Kulafu will frustrate anyone looking for an actual plot. The film really does seem to be designed to be a commercial for the brand of Manny Pacquiao. Its final moments actually feel like they could be images from a Nike Commercial starring Pacquiao, the story fully giving way to the iconography of the fighter, nothing mattering in the moment but the punches being thrown, the sweat dripping off the brow. It’s kind of compelling in its own way, but it just doesn’t feel like cinema. And how much more does the country really need to be sold on Manny Pacquiao?
My Rating:
