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Manila Bulletin devider Opinion devider 'Lakan' Sotto

'Lakan' Sotto

Published Dec 25, 2024 04:02 pm

MEDIUM RARE

Jullie Y. Daza

For something like the past 45 years, Vic Sotto has been cracking jokes and handing out cash and other pleasant surprises on the noontime TV show Eat Bulaga with Tito Sotto and Joey de Leon. Suddenly he’s now on the wide screen, acting regal and serious in “The Kingdom,” and he’s losing sleep because he’s not sure how his fans are going to take it.

The movie, one of 10 entered in the Metro Manila Film Festival timed for Christmas, shows him as king of a Philippines in a different time zone, that is, a country that has never been colonized. It’s an interesting what-if. For one, the flag on the wall looks totally different.

(Disclosure: The movie was produced and directed by Michael Tuviera, who is married to my daughter. This brief report is not meant to be a review, it focuses on the actors rather than on the movie as the creation of its director.)

For Vic Sotto and his fans, the change is headline news, if indeed news implies change. As he told a reporter on premiere night, he could not sleep for five days before the red-carpet event. Well, and this is coming not from a movie critic, you passed the test, “Lakan” Sotto. You may smile, make jokes, be funny again.

In a televised interview, the actor said “The Kingdom” took four months to produce, which sounds like a minor miracle, considering its scope, outdoor and out-of-town locations. At the lobby of the two theaters where the premiere was held simultaneously, some of the costumes and props used in the movie attracted considerable attention. I held two of the three knives on display. Intricately carved in multicolors, they looked too real for me to pull them out of their sheaths.

There’s some bloodshed in a fight scene where curved knives are the weapon of choice, and maybe they are authentic. Piolo Pascual plays a strong supporting role; he’s a farmer, he’s a rebel. As the kingdom’s citizens yearn for a better life, while suspecting their officials and soldiers of corruption, their Lakan must fight to survive his own lonely battle at home. Is he another King Lear, who had three daughters, only one of whom truly loved him?

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