Piolo Pascual is literally the finest thing in Raymond Red’s Manila’s Finest, which bagged the third best film award at the Metro Manila Film Festival (tie with Call Me Mother).

Pascual’s Magtibay is a hot, chain-smoking cop with the Manila Police District (MPD), a civilian police force nicknamed “Manila’s Finest.” But let’s be clear: there is no such thing as “Manila’s Finest.” The term is fictional, borrowed from “New York’s Finest,” the well-known nickname of the New York Police Department.

Pascual’s handsome police officer carries the film through sheer presence. Unfortunately, presence is all this film ever delivers. Everything else feels undercooked, hesitant, and strangely timid for a story about the collapse of civilian policing and the rise of militarized power.

Set in the late 1960s to early 1970s, before the declaration of Martial Law, the film drops us into a Manila drowning in student protests, riots, violent dispersals, and gang wars. Manila’s Finest cops comprise a force that is lightly armed, under-resourced, and plainly unprepared for mass political unrest.

And so we follow what is supposed to be a humiliating loss of operational authority. They are no longer the primary police force keeping order in the city.

Enter the MetroCom, the regional command of the Philippine Constabulary created to control Metro Manila. Militarized, powerful, meant to be terrifying. The film introduces them with cars pulling up beside the MPD and a series of killer stares. Cedric Juan, usually a formidable actor, is reduced to glaring. Meanwhile, “Finest” chief Javier (Rico Blanco)’s menace slides into caricature, capped by a silver-toothed laugh that signals threat without ever delivering it. His takeover of the MPD never feels dangerous. In fact, it barely feels consequential.

Red lavishes attention on atmosphere and production design, the color grading resembling my favorite Instagram filter: Fade Warm. This is where the film succeeds. Manila of that era is convincingly recreated—from vehicles to storefronts to buildings. It is handsome, precise, and museum-ready. But it is also where the film stops working. Its obsession with mood comes at the expense of story, tension, and character.

Performances are restrained but underdeveloped. Although excellent actors, Pascual, Enrique Gil, Joey Marquez, and Romnick Sarmenta are stranded in roles that never fully materialize. The script, from three writers—Michiko Yamamoto, Moira Lang, and Sherad Anthony Sanchez—is underwritten, where intent is suggested rather than confronted.

Magtibay’s personal life offers nothing interesting. His wife, played by Rica Peralejo—a welcome presence after a long hiatus—exists as a symbol rather than a real relationship. And his affair with a prostitute, played by Jasmine Curtis-Smith, fares no better. Sporting a modern hair color that disrupts the period illusion, the prostitute is not a person but merely shorthand for Magtibay’s stress.

Even the generational conflict goes nowhere. Magtibay’s daughter, played by singer Ashtine Olviga, expresses disappointment over the MPD’s failure to deal with student activists. But it slips into melodrama.

Much of the critical praise for the film leans on ideology. If viewed strictly from an anti–Martial Law perspective, sure, its silences may feel meaningful or even terrifying. But strip an audience’s ideology away, and what remains is an exercise in craft with no tension, no escalation, and no real danger. Even the music refuses to disturb.

That it won Best Cinematography makes sense. Manila’s Finest is pretty to look at. Unfortunately, it never grips or provokes. For a film borrowing a title that implies authority, confidence, and force, it ends up strangely toothless.

1.5 out of 5 stars

Now showing nationwide as part of the Metro Manila Film Festival.