‘Sa Aking Mga Kamay’ REVIEW: A Killer Heartthrob Meets A Broken Family
‘Sa Aking Mga Kamay’ REVIEW: A Killer Heartthrob Meets A Broken Family
Camille (Chin Chin Gutierrez) observes the Cattleya flower in Joven’s room while searching for her stolen wedding ring.
This review contains spoilers for Sa Aking Mga Kamay.
It’s the mid-90s. The Philippines is filled to the brim with a mix of romantic melodramas, love teams, and gun-heavy action movies. All three share the DNA of over-the-top acting and excessively emotional pomp. In the midst of this entertainment ubiquity is the writing machine that is Ricky Lee. One striking element from his massive body of work is a subversive action-drama-thriller titled Sa Aking Mga Kamay, headlined by its trio of stars, Christopher De Leon, Aga Muhlach, and Chin Chin Gutierrez. A serial killer on the loose lies at the film’s exterior, but a closer inspection reveals more than just the Cattleya flowers and bloodstained knives that are etched across it.
The duality of Gene Rivera. On the left is his “Cattleya Killer” persona and on the right is a troubled man dealing with a traumatic past.
The film starts immediately in the middle of a police raid. Cops are in search of the elusive “Cattleya Killer”, a handsome serial killer known for preying on adulterous wives and leaving Cattleya flowers on their beautiful, dead bodies. Immediately, it is revealed that Aga Muhlach plays this attractive psychopath, whose method of murder occurs right after his raucous display of sexual affection with the unfaithful victim. His vicious and unrelenting kills are always accompanied with a senseless spouting of adultery, accusing the woman of being unfaithful to their husband. Each murder he commits is cleanly executed and methodical, an indicator that he is adept and capable of escaping detection from the law.
Beneath this savage form of punishment lies a cyclical, if not, parallel series of character arcs which the film revolves around. Joven Dela Rosa (Christopher De Leon) is a high-ranking NBI agent assigned to investigate the “Cattleya Killer”. While he spends an ample amount of time in police stations and crime laboratories, the film shines more light on his family life. As a married man to wife Camille (Chin Chin Gutierrez), he exudes a stern and uncaring exterior to their child’s fear of monsters and the dark while simultaneously pouring so much time on police work that his aggressive demeanor carries over to his household. It’s a tenuous family situation that leaves the door wide open for Gene Rivera, the public persona of the “Cattleya Killer”, to step in and cause discord to the family. Drug-addled creative director by day and serial killer by night, his penchant for adulterous violence is born out of his own mother’s infidelity–something Gene’s father would use as a reason for murdering her in their family home–and obsession for Cattleyas (she scolds him for breaking her vase full of one). It’s a backstory that runs parallel to Joven’s own situation, and the film makes it known that he may likely tread the same path as Gene’s father.
Joven Dela Rosa (Christopher De Leon) stares at an incriminating piece of evidence that personally disturbs him. His partner, Dino (Kier Legaspi) looks over in the background.
Ricky Lee’s efficient writing is in full display here as the film spends the rest of its runtime grasping these characters together in a way that opens the door to reveal a subtext on broken family dynamics with Lee’s touch of powerless women using infidelity as a means to escape an unhappy marriage and an insensitive, uncaring husband. Unlike his feminist trilogy with Marilou Diaz-Abaya, the feminine pursuit for power and independence isn’t as objectively clear in this movie. Instead, it is displayed as a questionable act with serious repercussions that gives a dilemma for affected husbands on how to proceed accordingly.
That unhappy marriage and the unrelenting pursuit of a serial killer are combined in such a way that after the film immediately unravels the circumstances of Gene’s killing spree, it is easy to predict that Camille will be the next victim of his bloodthirsty endeavors. This is where the film diverges and plays with expectations by tying the three disgruntled parties together.
Joven’s obsession feeds into Camille’s unhappiness, which in turn, leads her to the arms of Gene. At the thick of this narrative entanglement is an unhappy wife who, after a significant event occurs in the movie, is forced into an even more voiceless position because of how scared she is to reveal her infidelity despite the cruel treatment she is given by an emotionally distressed Gene. It doesn’t help that Gene further sinks his toes into this disgruntled family by befriending Joven in order to plant ideas about murdering her and prevent Camille from speaking out about her unfaithfulness. Ricky Lee has essentially turned a psychopathic serial killer’s violence towards the calculated destruction of a family. It transforms the movie from a generic Filipino police drama, into questions about the extent of husband-wife loyalty, the importance of a tight-knit family, and how far one is willing to save or break it in the face of infidelity. To be clear, popular Filipino action and horror tropes still find their way here– the buddy cop, the smoky night scenes, the blaring synthesizer music– as commercially appealing elements (this is a Star Cinema movie, after all) but they do not significantly diminish the film’s core elements.
The climax of the movie takes place in a rundown mansion. It is worth noting as a fun fact that this same mansion is used extensively in a similar Filipino movie about subverted expectations, Fan Girl.
Describing this film as subversive is probably an understatement, but considering the pool of Filipino movies that are packed with their fair share of clichés, this film does a lot to subvert elements of those. Most people will likely associate Aga Muhlach with a slew of romantic and upbeat roles that put him on the driver’s seat of a heartfelt romance. In this movie, he plays against typecast by delivering one of most gripping performances as a dashing serial killer with a twisted mind. There are scenes in this movie that make him feel spider-like in his movements, appearing to be very agile and nimble in hunting down his victims. Chin Chin Gutierrez’s character initially comes off as the dramatic and concerned housewife who berates her husband for being a terrible father, but once she begins dealing with her infidelity, her cognitive dissonance and loyalty to her husband are portrayed in such crystal clear fashion that you can’t help but be very sold on her performance as well. Of the three main stars, Christopher De Leon admittedly plays the closest to the expected tropes of a typical action movie, but even he is granted some form of uniqueness in how his character is positioned in dealing with his own family and his murder case.
Because of this film’s subversive elements, the film prides itself on being a truly enjoyable experience. Not a single minute of this film has a section that drives away the audience from watching, except for a very sensitive and relatively disturbing scene in the middle. It still has that hallmark of exaggerated Filipino acting, but it is less condescending and overused in comparison to its contemporaries. Even the killer’s godfather, who is barely built and is quickly killed off before the movie’s halfway mark, finds some relevance to the killer’s personal motives even if it feels undersold and frankly useless knowing Gene’s personal behaviors. The cliché ending feels like the weakest element of this movie simply because of how the family’s response after everything has happened doesn’t feel as convincing as the rest of the film is.
All things considered though, this straightforward action-drama-thriller pieces itself together successfully. The film’s formulaic influences are altered so creatively that it stands out in the library of mid 90’s Filipino action-drama cinema. It’s one thing to be able to twist a romantic heartthrob into someone that can legitimately feel terrifying, but to go even further and throw him into a family on the rocks is another. It’s remarkable how Ricky Lee and Rory Quintos managed to weave these elements together in a mainstream production, but the end result is mostly a stroke of creative genius.
Sa Aking Mga Kamay is now available on iWant and KTX for 99 PHP.
