Movie: Exodus

	Producers:	Imus Productions Reality Entertainment, Inc. Ignite Media, Inc. Enchanted Kingdom
	Release:	December 25, 2005
	Genre:	Action/Fantasy
	MTRCB Rating:	GP

Half the Metro Manila Filmfest movies cater mostly to children or teens. I expected Exodus to be such. I've always regarded Bong Revilla as a person who appears in fairly decent movies and sitcoms, not great, but decent compared to movies/shows usually made to cater to the "masa". I was excited to find out if this film was good or not.

Compared to Filipino films made in the genre of action/fantasy (note that I haven't watched that many Filipino action/fantasy movies - the trailers fail to catch my attention) I'd say this is good. Could have been better, but I think the producers were short on budget, and they either had little time to fine tune the story, or they had little time to take more footage, or they were forced to make cuts so that the movie never ran more than two hours (it is 1 hr and 46 mins long). Whatever it is, something was lacking.

Characters:
The main character, Exodus, was of the mercenary turned hero on a quest destined to be king mold. It's so cliche it's boring. In this story, the hero didn't know he is the son of the dead king - a spirit elemental who decided to live among mortals and be the king of humans.

However, the ideas behind the other characters were good, and it would have been cooler had the characters been further developed or executed well.

Tayho, an earth elemental that looks like a mix between Tikbalang and Centaur, is a fast, strong, but stupid and cowardly creature. When Bagulbol and his minions were wiping out his species, they didn't bother to look for him (coward that he is, he probably went into hiding) as they considered him harmless. He was the only character who didn't get a decent fighting scene. I could deal with that as it fits his cowardly nature. What I hated was Benjie Paras' use of the mannerisms so common in Pinoy comedy to supposedly make the character "funny". I therefore found him annoying rather than funny in some scenes. I don't know if it was Benjie's idea to act that way, or it was the director telling him to.

Silab, a fire elemental that looks something out of the Dragonball Z cartoon, is the eternal child that could throw balls of fire and split into mean fighting twins when he wishes to. His preference to wander meant that he wasn't around when the rest of his kind was wiped out by Bagulbol. He later decided to live in the ruins of his city, where Exodus found him. BJ Forbes is a child actor who first got attention in the Tide commercials. His acting here however was overshadowed by a very bad red wig that production stuck on his head.

Bangkila is an aswang. She was an air elemental who broke the laws in a quest to be more powerful and was therefore sent into exile. She was consequently not present when her people were killed. She doesn't care about anybody and prefers to be alone. Cold, calculating, sharp metal fingernails, and wings that allow her to fly swiftly, Bangkila is, in my book, the coolest of Exodus' "sidekicks".

Lin-Ay is considered the fairest of the water elementals. Those who were envious of her had her tied up at the bottom of a lake, where she is doomed to sleep forever. Many had forgotten her existence by the time her people were killed. She woke up when Exodus untied her. Her costume reminds me of the floating women in Japanese paintings. A very feminine creature, she proved able to defend herself in a nice action scene where she levitated rocks to surround her and therefore block lightning arrows. One swift pebble was all it took for her opponent to taste the sweet kiss of death.

King Bagulbol as the villain is played by Jay-R ... making this one of those stories where the villain is good-looking and knows it. The number of masks and costumes he changes into underline the vanity of the character. Apparently, Bagulbol is one of the last known spirit elementals alive as he is so insecure that he wiped out species/creatures that posed any threat to him. To take the throne, he masterminded an uprising and killed the old king (Exodus' father).

Now for my favorite character:

In Bagulbol's court sits Alas. This courtier spends most of the day reading "tarot" cards that one usually sees floating around him. As his main talent is reading future events in his cards, he is not of the warrior type and easily retreats during battle. He could, however, turn his cards into projectiles - and anyone who has been cut by paper knows it is actually possible to get hurt by cards or paper. The floating cards are cool, but what I find cooler is that they had comedian Long Mejia play the role ... and I commend him for not taking the "comedian route" with this role like Benjie Paras.

The plot:
Bagulbol killed the old king and proclaimed himself the new ruler of the mortal world. A former guardian of humans like the other spirit elementals, he found humans too weak to deserve his protection and he plans to create his own species ... which basically involved capturing humans and turning them into mutants.

Humans rebelled but were no match to Bagulbol and his forces. Finally, only one settlement of humans was left: Bantayan. The leader of the rebels knew that the humans's hope of survival lies in killing Bagulbol, and he knows that it would take the help of other elementals to kill him. The rebels pool the money they have to hire the mercenary Exodus to go into the world of encantos to find elementals that could still be alive if the legends they hear are true.

The leader intentionally put on the list an earth elemental, a fire elemental, an air elemental, a water elemental and a spirit elemental. Exodus would capture all except the last one who was already dead courtesy of Bagulbol. The leader of the rebels was crestfallen to find out that Bagulbol is the last spirit elemental alive. Had the other spirit elemental lived, he could merge with the other four elementals and therefore match Bagulbol's strength (I am assuming that Bagulbol was strong because he had absorbed other elementals into himself ... by force).

As luck would have it, Exodus would later learn that he is the son of the old king and therefore also a spirit elemental. He escaped death because his father ordered one of his trusted men to take him far away before he faced Bagulbol. So in the end, like Voltes 5, the five elementals "volt in" (Exodus absorbs the other four elementals into him) in order to fight Bagulbol... if you got lost on the voltes5 reference then you're 10 years older off my age (older or younger). Note that the other elementals willingly merge with him, and therefore after the fight they leave Exodus' body.

More than half the movie was spent chronicling Exodus' quest to find the other elementals, leaving little time for the fighting sequences ... the confrontations ended too fast considering that opposing forces had formidable powers. If they planned that each of the elementals would have a nemesis, then they should have given those fight sequences more time. The confrontation between Bagulbol and Exodus at the end of the movie started out promising but soon lost steam.

Imus Production is one of the producers of this movie. The company is owned by the Revillas so you'd see many of them in the movie: starting with the Bong Revilla, his father Ramon Revilla, and Bong's sons.

The movie is not so bad compared to Filipino films of the same genre. It is not as memorable as Rizal and other good Filipino movies, and it would definitely pale in comparison to North American fantasy movies. It is noteworthy though that unlike most Filipino fantasy movies, Exodus decided not to become an all-out comedy like the Pedro Penduko and Okay Ka, Fairy Ko movies.