A man has his daughter kidnapped and he does everything in his power to get her back. Before you think that this is a review for Taken 3: Keeping Track of People isn’t in his set of Acquired Skills, rest assured, Liam Neeson isn’t at all attached to this movie. Graceland trades Neeson for Marlon Villar (Arnold Reyes), an ordinary driver for the corrupt government official Manuel Chango (Menggie Cobarrubias). The kidnapper, Visel (Leon Miguel), takes both Chango’s and Villar’s daughters; forcing them deeper and deeper into the seedy streets of the Philippines.
Don’t expect any crazy heroic combat. Villar is not a superhero. He does not have any set of skills. He is an incredibly ordinary man placed in the most impossible of situations, desperately grasping at the chance for a return to stability.
Director and writer Ron Morales methodically constructs his thriller with no room for breathing or steady hands. Gasps for calm are neglected for exposed nerves and a hemorrhaging sense of humanity. We are completely immersed and helplessly suspended as we fall deeper and deeper into a worsening situation.
Morales achieves this with a unique blend of a raw, visceral grain and a hypnotic stylism. He shades his cinema verite patina with a deep and sonorous score. The echoes of the sobering music paralleled the reverberating trauma and depth resonating within each character.
With so many bland thrillers these days relying on one or two major punches, Morales provides a refreshingly creatively change of pace with both a complex and decadent script. As the film progresses, more and more layers are peeled back and festering motives and secrets are revealed. We slowly and unwillingly realize the horrific limits people are willing to break in the goal of achieving the simplest and most basal of aims.
Graceland is the complete antithesis of an American thriller. There is no flash, no amazing set pieces, and no headlining star. Graceland is cinema at it’s purest form; brutally committed performances, a script full of tremendous depth and realized potential, and the grappling of terribly relevant themes such as sexual exploitation and human trafficking. So Neeson may add style and grace to Taken films, but much like real life, Graceland has none.
Pulp Diction 