With a rapid fire, completely unvarnished style that invites comparisons to the Dogme 95 movement to say nothing of the shaky cam style of Paul Greengrass, Filipino director Brillante Mendoza is very much a product of the digital age. Unfettered by the heavy camera crews required by shooting on film Mendoza is free to roam, to throw his camera into the midst of chaos and simply capture what happens around it. No mistake, Slingshot is a work of fiction but it is one so firmly rooted in the reality of poverty in Manila that it could easily be a documentary. But while Mendoza succeeds admirably in capturing the tone of his surroundings it's hard to shake the feeling that Slingshot is, to a great degree, a missed opportunity.
The opening scene immediately captures both the strength and weakness of Mendoza's work. The camera - always handheld - works its way through a squatter slum in the seedy part of Manila, giving the audience a tour of the jam packed warren of streets, ditches and multi story hovels that are home to the scores of urban poor that drive the film. A voice warns them all that a raid is coming, the police are on the way, and residents scatter, melting into the shadows - one memorably making an escape down an open ditch of raw sewage. Chaos erupts when the police arrive. The kick in doors, dragging all the men out into a common square with arrest-them-all-and-sort-them-out-later efficiency, the camera providing an intimate portrait of it all.
That intimacy is Mendoza's greatest strength. By using a large cast, many of whom are not professional actors, and a restless camera he is able to skip through a day in the life of the neighborhood. The feeling is uncannily authentic and unvarnished. We see these people at their worst, desperately scrabbling for any handout available from the local politicians openly buying votes in the lead in to a coming election. And those who can't survive on gifts beg, borrow and steal without shame. It's a hard life, presented without any gloss or apology, it simply is what it is.
The great weakness of Slingshot, however, has its roots in precisely the same place. The cast is far too large, the film far too ambitious in scope for running under ninety minutes. Mendoza seems to want the neighborhood itself to be the principal character, which is interesting in theory but in practice it results in a film that has no narrative through-line whatsoever, no central story or character to provide the audience entry into this world. By constantly bouncing from story to story Mendoza ironically keeps the audience at a distance - there is simply never enough time spent on any one character, on any one story, for the audience to invest in them emotionally whatsoever and the film quickly devolves into a string of disconnected scenes as a result.
The weaknesses of Slingshot are tragic. Mendoza is clearly a gifted director and one who has a lot to say and by trying to say too much Mendoza unfortunately ends up not saying very much at all.
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