First published for the BeRaters here.
Panday 2 starts off just after the villain Lizardo is supposed to have died at the hands of the titular hero Flavio, the blacksmith, in what I presume was the climactic sequence of the last Bong Revilla Panday. Not having watched that movie, I felt like I was walking into the middle of the story. Thankfully – although not surprisingly – it was fairly easy to catch up.
Flavio – played by Ramon “Bong” Revilla – had just killed Lizardo with his legendary Sword of Omens – I mean – punyal. He returns home where a welcoming committee hails him as a hero and and fusses over his blushing would-be-bride [the enchanting Iza Calzado]. In the meantime, a hag – played by Lorna Tolentino in the most cliched witch halloween costume you can imagine – assumes the role of story-teller and in the comfort of her lair announces ominously that Philip Salvador’s Lizardo is not dead, just recovering his strength. Of course, the people in the village are pretty much unaware of this shocking fact and go about joyfully preparing for the coming wedding of Flavio and his lady love.
[Interestingly – well for me anyway – the original Panday movies called it the balaraw. As far as I’ve been able to find out, the use of the word punyal, started with the flavio-come-latelys. Balaraw seems to be the generic term for dagger, in reference to the magical sword’s default appearance. Punyal on the other hand, refers to a specific kind of dagger; particularly of southern origin; some say Maranao. Now this is interesting because it introduces an element of inaccuracy. A balaraw can be have a straight double-edged blade and a symmetrical quillon or crossguard precisely because it is a generic term and can therefore refer to a wide range of dagger configurations. A punyal on the other hand is almost exclusively a single-edged blade with a handle distinctively shaped almost like a pistol grip, as opposed to the straight handle of most other daggers. Flavio’s weapon has a double-edged blade and a straight grip, making it, in my opinion, more accurate to refer to it as a balaraw, rather than a punyal.]
Apparently however, villains have great recuperative powers and long before the wedding preparations are done Lizardo is back, albeit looking like a Walking Dead reject. Showing surprising alacrity for one so recently returned from the land of the almost dead, Lizardo summons up bats and walking stone people and manananggals – if you’re interested, those are called “viscera vampires” in english – who he then sends to bedevil the mortals.
Strangely, despite people being understandably alarmed at the resurgence of these beasties all they really do is gripe about it a little to Flavio who, after a brief frown meant to communicate concern, proceeds to cavort with his lady love, much to the dismay of his dragon, Bagwis. Clearly putting all their faith in a protector who himself showed great nonchalance at the news of neighboring villages being ravaged by ghouls and such, the people of Flavio’s village feel no fear at all in staying up late at night drinking shots and needling the Blacksmith about his impending entry into the realm of the henpecked. But their hubris is repayed in spades as the monsters finally attack their village and, naturally, cart away the future bride still dressed in her wedding gown. As she was being flown away, you could almost hear her hangers-on clucking their tongues at her for laughing off their warnings about how unlucky it was to try on the wedding dress before the wedding.
Righteously pissed at being cock-blocked, Flavio then sets off to find Lizardo [of course everyone assumed it was him sending out all the ghouls, especially after the face-contorting antics of Joonee Gamboa playing the requisite blind hermit-sage-uncle figure] and force him to give up the girl. Of course, Lizardo does nothing of the sort and instead lures the Blacksmith into his lair and sends harpies down to make short work of the locals.
Needless to say, Flavio doesn’t get his lady love, earns the contempt of the locals [who are then given a stern moralizing lecture by Gamboa’s hermit] and he now has to start the long and meandering road to redemption.
As a fantasy movie, this one has it all. It’s got weird creatures in costume romping around, its got CGI nasties flying around, and an over-top soul-less ginger of a villain who disconcertingly looks like Michael V, if Michael V ever joined the ICP and consented to wearing white clown makeup and raccoon eyes. Other than that, don’t expect too much. In fact, you might even feel like you’ve seen the movie before – and you probably have. Look for scenes ripped out of such Hollywood movies as the 2010 version of Clash of the Titans, the Scorpion King, Thor, and the considerably more animated and three-dimensional How to Train Your Dragon. Oh and, if at some point you feel like you’re watching a Power Rangers fight scene with random villains popping out of pyrotechnic smoke, or the closing battle scenes of those giant robot cartoons, don’t worry: you’re not the only one getting a bad case of deja vu.
On a slightly more positive note, Flavio at least doesn’t do a Lion-O Sword of Omens activation sequence. Instead, he slowly and ritualistically pulls out the tiny dagger and raises his arm while the camera moves in a downward arc resulting in a very heroic shot of … Flavio’s pit hair.
Story-wise, it’s your basic quest where the hero with the sword goes after the jerk who steals the girl and wants to rule the world. But with even with so rudimentary a plot, this movie – which looks like it would be more comfortable within the confines of a television screen – totally suffered from bad story-telling. Abruptly going from one trope to the next – the hero flirting with hubris; the hero teetering on the edge of corruption from the power he held in his hand; the hero with a tender side comforting a weeping child, and so on – with no unifying narrative other than audience’s moral certainty of what was going to happen next, the whole thing was so disjointed that it felt more like a power point presentation than the heroic epic it was supposed to be. Of course, for what it presumably set out to achieve, a power point presentation might have been all that was really needed.
But then again, I suppose that even brilliant editing would not be able to do anything about the lack of creativity that dragged the whole movie down. Take for instance Flavio’s inventive way of hunting down Lizardo: he goes to the nearest beach and screams “LIZAAAAARDO!” Kinda like Brad Pitt’s Achilles did in Troy when he was trying to get Eric Bana’s Hector to come down to the beach to fight him. When Lizardo doesn’t show – unlike the more accommodating Hector – Flavio basically wanders around at random and waits for something to happen. Lucky for him – and us – something invariably does. In fact, I think the Best Supporting Actor award should go to the deus that was ex machina in this move. No one else exerted quite as much effort to move the story along as that poor bugger.
The CGI was respectable. But then again, we already know that Filipino talent in that department regularly stands toe-to-toe with the best of the rest of the world. SO this should not be about how this movie is a great showcase of that talent. Instead, it would have been nicer if, instead of being content with showing off that talent, the movie had put the CGI to good use by providing it with a good solid and well-told story. The best movies don’t allow the special effects to rule the film, but instead use it to enhance the story so that you are drawn into the narrative in a way that allows you to suspend your disbelief. If it were otherwise – if the story is just used as a framework for the effects and the action – then what you have is either a demo reel or a porn movie.
That Panday 2 missed this opportunity to be much better than it was is pretty sad considering that – as trite as the plot may have been – there were at least a couple of scenes, playing off on very resonant themes of parenthood and righteous anger, where you could have really immersed yourself in the world on the screen. Unfortunately those moments were not only few and far between, they were also over too quickly. Dropping a long-standing policy of pacificism, for instance, would certainly have occasioned more anguish and passion than just a quick expression change can manage. Unfortunately, it seemed that it was more important to give time to the thinly veiled “social awareness” messages that – apart from being awkwardly written and forcibly shoe-horned into various scenes – considerably aided in keeping the audience at arms-length.
As a final note, I find it perverse that, for a movie that so obviously put a premium on preaching social awareness and which was rated for General Patronage, Panday 2 actually carries a very clearly implied rape scene. And as if mere physical violation weren’t bad enough, it was preceded by mental and emotional violence [“he can have your heart, but your body is all mine”], perpetrated on an unconscious abducted victim, and later used as a taunt [“I got her first!”]. Classy. A GP rating means that this movie is suitable for children, which makes me entertain very serious doubts about whether that rating system actually does what it’s supposed to do.