ON THE JOB (Erik Matti). 120 minutes. Subtitled. Opens Friday (September 27). For venues and times, see listings. Rating: NNN
Erik Matti’s On The Job feels like his version of a Johnnie To thriller, using a pulsing crime story to explore a corrupt culture on multiple levels.
In this case, it’s the political and social murk of Matti’s native Philippines, where convicts are used as contract killers, secretly escorted from prison to perform assassinations, then let back in – perfect cover.
The story unfolds on two tracks. In one, a pair of convicts (Joel Torre and Gerald Anderson) form a father-son bond while doing their bloody work and trying to manage their relationships with their unsuspecting families on the outside in the other, a detective (Piolo Pascual) realizes that a string of murders is politically motivated and tries to figure out why.
Their paths collide about an hour in with an elaborate cat-and-mouse chase set in a hospital. And things get even bloodier from there.
