Heneral Luna recounts the active years of General Antonio Luna, apparently the Philippines' most able army general. In this movie, we get to see scenes based on actual facts during the controversial years of the Spanish-American era in PH. We see how Aguinaldo played as the country's president as we faced crucial stages for our independence, but we see how Luna struggled to give this country a strong leader behind the thorn-full curtains of this era.
The cast generally gave justice to their respective characters. John Arcilla has proven many times why he is THE JOHN ARCILLA. Based on What I know about Heneral Luna, I bet he's giving Mr. Arcilla a tap on the back for his stellar performance. Ketchup Eusebio deserves an honorable mention for playing an excellent antagonist.
Much credit goes to the director, Jarrod Tarog, and his writers. The unexpected humor was effective in lightening things up as scenes were getting kind of heavy to watch. It's often painful to watch movies on Philippine history, especially when they remind us of our demise under foreign fists. We get to see how Pinoys can crack a joke at almost anything just to help them get by.
Heneral Luna shines with its visual effects. Though there's still room for improvement with how we stage gunshots, this movie is a sign that local films are improving in quality. There were also unnecessary slow-mos and blurred audios, but I believe these were put to give room for internalization.
Heneral Luna uses a familiar strategy of using a journalist as an eyewitness who plays the narrator, and this strategy worked in delivering the heart that it intended to deliver. At the end of this film, we'll get so many feels on being a Filipino. We'll see how politics in this country was dirty and dangerous since time immemorial. We'll see how a nation easily falls with divided people. We'll be challenged to take a look at how and who we are now as a country. And if we take this movie seriously, we get to question our own contributions for this country, if we are doing our part to show nationalism and pay back what Our Motherland deserves.
"Dahil sa bandang huli, ang tunay na kalaban ng Pilipino, ay ang kanyang sarili."
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