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Alpha: Right To Kill Photo: Courtesy of San Sebastian Film Festival Alpha, The Right To Kill, until Tuesday, All4.com

Brillante Mendoza's gritty crime drama plunges us into the world of Rodrigo Dutarte's 'drug war' and police corruption in the Philippines and is well worth catching before it leaves All4's catch-up service. Focusing on cop Moises (Allen Dizon) and his relationship with young, streetwise snitch - or Alpha - Elijah (Elijah Filamor), the plot is driven by a plan to take down a drug kingpin. The plot beats may be familiar from other films but its political commentary is scathing, as is the strong sense of the contrast between Manila's haves and have nots is all its own. Catch it quick before it leaves Channel 4's catch-up service.

This Teacher, w4free.com

I was quite surprised to discover this tense indie gem lurking on free...

Brillante Mendoza has made a career out of highlighting the “dark corners” of the Philippines, and “Alpha” is no exception to the rule. His style, however, is much different here, as the film winks at the mainstream, despite the fact that the documentary-like tactics are still here. Let us take things from the beginning, though.

“Alpha: The Right to Kill” is screening at Helsinki Cine Aasia 2019

The story revolves around two radically different individuals, with the Philippines Government’s crackdown on illegal drugs functioning as the background. The first one is Police Officer Espino, a respectable professional, family man and Christian, and Elijah, a small-time pusher who has become his informant, in a desperate effort to provide for his wife and newborn child. During a police raid to the hideout of a notorious drug dealer named Abel that results in a number of deaths on the criminal’s side and very few arrests,...

Don’t come to “Alpha, The Right to Kill,” the latest rough-hewn slab of social realism from Filipino auteur Brillante Ma Mendoza, in search of revelations, either in form or content. A rumbling, street-pounding drug-war thriller, it’s far from the first film to paint cops and dealers on this beat as equally bent; a Mendoza joint that drags viewers brusquely through the ragged poverty and institutional corruption of modern Manila is hardly an unfamiliar proposition either. “Alpha” doesn’t profess to be anything new, however: There’s a bone-weary resignation to its worldview that underlines its simple moral point all the more effectively.

That said, this story of a Swat officer and a punkish informant’s fateful outside-the-law collaboration is Mendoza’s most propulsive and engrossing variation on his favored themes in some time. It’s also his most straight-up genre exercise to date — somewhat reminiscent of José Padilha...