Birdshot

This movie portrays how things work in real life, in a very sensitive way. Excellent movie.

Birdshot, a coming of age story centered on a young farm girl named Maya (Mary Joy Apostol) who inadvertently shoots an endangered Eagle (Haribon) setting off a police investigation. On one hand, it's a coming of age tale and on the other hand, there's a good detective drama on offer here with Domingo (Arnold Reyes), a earnest rookie cop investigating missing farmers. While the two may be different genders and ages, they mirror each other in many ways. The story that has depth and beauty, juxtaposed by self effacing, unapologetic, honesty. A reflection, in many ways, of the stark Filipina outback, in which it is set.

Birdshot has a a slow yet steady heartbeat throughout that builds tension over each carefully, well-shot scene. It is a wonderfully slow paced movie that gives you time to chew on the underlying fat of what is so screwed up with the police force and the political scene in the region.

The plus side was the technical aspect, with the cinematography being the added bonus, perfectly capturing the mood in the isolated remote locations and the editing handled by the director himself.

If you're a sucker for fast paced mystery thrillers keep away from this movie. But if you desire thought provoking scenes loaded with powerful imagery without having topics shoved down your throat, seek this film out, and enjoy what it has to offer.

This film, was difficult to watch after recently seeing "Despair". Both portrayed the insane brutality, of which we humans are capable. While "Despair" was obviously a contrived work of fiction, "Birdshot" showed a very real situation in the world, where groups feel threatened enough by those in power above them, to abandon their ethical or "moral" principles to survive. It makes me ask,"Who started this chain of submission and why did no one try to stop it, before it got out of control ?". I think of Soviet Russia and how "Party" members murdered so many of their own citizens under Stalin's orders. How far down the hierarchy did this have to go , until it was too late to reverse it ? Are we so needy for social standing and recognition, that we will go along with hideous acts to satisfy this ? Do we value our brief and inconsequential lives so much, that we will not risk them to save so many others, from "immorality" ?. This film, within a very small milieu brings up these difficult questions very powerfully.

With all the obvious flaws in this film, it is not really bad, it's watchable and it's way better than mainstream Filipino films. Filipino films are rotten but Birdshot can't be considered rotten, I give it 5/10.

The actor who portrays Maya needs more acting workshop. She is pretty but her acting skills is not really good.

The Philippine police is portrayed here in a mild way, the Philippine police in reality is worse than how it is portrayed in the film. The Philippine police now is very rotten, corrupt, and could not be trusted. Killers, police are.

The corruption and arbitrarieness besides the lack of care for ethic and moral values shown in this film about the procedures carried out by the Filipino police must be a wake up call for the Government of this country to make amendments because of the image this movie projects to the World. The script is good, original, well structured and with a nice imagery as well as its unexpected ending to close paralell stories