Un relenting, urgent, mesmerizing, VERDICT, hits its message home hard.
Cracking along at the sort of pace normally experienced in thrillers, VERDICT is the debut feature of Raymund Ribay Gutierrez. An award winning, celebrated short film maker, it was always going to be interesting what this highly original Filipino director/writer came up with for his first feature, and VERDICT doesn’t disappoint.
The central character, ‘Joy’ is a 32- year-old mother, who lives in a rundown house in a rundown inner city area in the Philippines. Drugs are rife, but she struggles to deliver some sort of a normal child hood and upbringing to her 6-year-old daughter ‘Angel.’ Alas, her young husband ‘Dante’ is violent, especially when drunk, or worse, high on crystal meth. A shocking opener for any film, but what is shocking is the complete ‘normal-ness’ of their deprived world. Gutierrez paints a grim picture of inner-city poverty in the 21st century, however, during this particularly harrowing, violent opening, where Dante badly beats Joy, Angel gets caught in between them, is injured, and it pushes Joy too far. She runs to the Police, and the domestic abuse unit, and that’s it, she wants Dante prosecuted, and she wants him out of their lives.
Here begins Joy’s journey through an overworked, corrupt, uncaring system, as she fights for her rights. The pace is unrelenting, and she is blocked at every turn. With a lot of hand held and reportage camera work that follows the action, and the action alone, the film has a gritty real, fly on the wall feel. However, this is no stylistic pose from a low budget film maker, but the perfect way to tell Joy’s story. Nothing is spared, there’s no redeeming prettiness or visual tone other than that to show bare, fierce story telling. Because that is what VERDICT is. It’s about as close to ‘real-time,’ following real action as drama can get without becoming a documentary or news footage in a war zone.
This is no elegant, dramatic, moral debate, but a raw exposure of things that need to change.
The film is for one purpose alone, and that is to make the audience sit up and take notice of the central character and all that her suffering means, and to jolt us into action. This is no elegant, dramatic, moral debate, but a raw exposure of things that need to change. Joy’s need is urgent, she is noble, yet a victim at the same time. All the characters are indicative of a society that’s decaying from the inside of the city outwards. However, this is not just about one city, one country; VERDICT has universal themes about domestic abuse that sadly run through all cultures around the world.
VERDICT’s powerful messages are also helped by a very well-directed cast of upcoming, dedicated, talented but not well-known actors, all of whom turn in wonderful performances. The writing is also superb, sharp, spare and tightly driven. The cinematography is spot on, and excellently framed by Joshua Reyles, who is it hoped will go onto far bigger things. Born of a low budget, VERDICT delivers a hard punch, and pushes the envelope when it comes to scheduling, budgets and exactly what can be done with crowds, and rundown locations. The result is an unmissable piece of film making that deserves all the accolades it has garnered and all those to come.
5 stars
VERDICT is available now on Digital Platforms
Reviewed by Jane A. Foster. Also a writer/director, Jane loves to support indie film making and is currently in development for her second feature, as well as being attached to a couple of other projects. janecreates@23-films.com
