Erik Matti has pushed himself even further with Buybust. As a project, although we've seen it before, is almost impossible to pull-off, the man admitted it himself. So the fact that this film exists and that it is local, for me, is impressive. Still, to rank some of his best films, Buybust comes as one of my least favorite.

It gets stale in this maze it puts itself into. In its build up, with so much hostility surrounding its characters, it surprisingly never established enough tension for me to be gripped and be fully immersed with it.

Soon enough, it goes out of control and we are presented with this cluttered unconfined chaos -slash- "shaky cam fest". I don't know, for me, most of the time in that second act, I had no idea what was going on.

The action and fight scenes get steadier as the film reaches its finale. It is claustrophobic and graphic, to the point that it becomes unrealistic, and I feel like it is intentionally assembled that way.

Its hyperbolized bloodshed, something they might have gotten from Aronofsky's playbook, is probably gonna stir a lot of takes from people, but for me, it is a powerful criticism of our times.

In that chilling final shot of the aftermath, we are reminded once again who the losers are no matter what type of war we wage in. But we never learn.

As a whole, it is a grand action film. No scale could measure it. And it would be really nice if everyone would watch it so that we could talk about it in-depth. I just have to mention Arjo Atayde somewhere in here coz he pretty much stole the show.

Erik Matti has continued to push himself and the whole local scene with him. I think that type of drive from a filmmaker is very contagious. Wherever we are headed, it is in the right direction.

Surprising good and action packed Filipino film about betrayal, corruption, and the drug underworld. This film is violent and frenetic but that gives you a cinematic sense of the drug underworld in South East Asia. Anne Curtis leads an ensemble cast of unknowns to me, who are really good in this film about a drug raid gone bad in an attempt to catch a high level cartel under lord. Curtis' brings gravitas to her performance as a suspicious soldier whose prior unit was ambushed due to a double cross. This film is chaotic but not by accident, or by poor cinematography- the opposite. It is well filmed and well directed. The pacing is engaging. If you like the feel of Gareth Evans, The Raid, then you will enjoy this one. There is a lot of gunplay and fighting, but not martial arts. It is violent. It is subtitled.