Green Bones (Zig Dulay, 2024)

Presumed innocent

Zig Dulay's Green Bones from a script by Ricky Lee and Angeli Guidaya-Atienza (story by Joseph Conrad Rubio, Kristian Julao, Angeli Guidaya-Atienza, and Ricky Lee) turns on the premise that a convict judged and sentenced isn't always guilty, and truth is always more complicated.  

Having more than passing familiarity with correctional facilities I'd say the answer is: it depends. When you talk to a convict they're always innocent, but when you read their files or talk to someone familiar with their case they're always guilty.

(WARNING: Story and plot twists discussed in explicit detail!)

It's different with prison dramas; in this case prison guard Xavier (Ruru Madrid) is determined to stop the impending release of Dom (Dennis Trillo), the convict who killed Xavier's sister. 

Turns out there's more to the story (surprise surprise); director Dulay uses a fragmented time scheme to tell Dom and Xavier's narratives, the same time spinning out their backstories along the way. Xavier is convinced criminals can never reform; Dom is a criminal, or was born that way, but thanks to the unquestioning love of his sister (and affection of his young niece) eventually does reform.

Questions arise: if it takes a supportive family to change a man, where do correctional facilities come in? If Dom is in fact innocent and all this was the result of a vast criminal conspiracy out to exploit him as a scapegoat (again, surprise) then what's the film's message-- that one mustn't presume guilt because one might condemn an innocent man? Shouldn't the larger more important message be: one mustn't presume guilt, period? Whether or not a man is innocent or guilty?

Justice isn't that easy: there must be clarity, a willingness to take responsibility, an identification of cyclical patterns that have compelled one to repeatedly transgress, and a solid realistic plan to pay back the community for the damage caused. That's one theory, anyway-- personally I'd be willing to settle for 'willingness to take responsibility,' often the early step too big for most convicted offenders to undertake in the first place. Dom on the other hand seems too good to be true: not only willing to take responsibility but willing to answer for crimes he didn't commit. When the publicity material calls the film's characters 'morally complex' what they really mean is characters that may look like low criminals but are inwardly noble human beings who only need that one chance to turn their life around, like in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.

The cast is almost universally handsome (none of this unglamorous casting nonsense a al Isang Himala, tenk yew!) so leave it to the supporting cast to be more interesting, particularly Ronnie Lazaro as eccentric (to put it mildly) cat lover Edgardo, Nonie Buencamino as reform-minded prison official Jorge Delos Santos, and Michael de Mesa as highly placed corrupt prison official Juanito Velasqu. 

Dennis Trillo (who's both lead and co-owner of the producing company Brightburn Entertainment) assumes the martyr role with becoming modesty but Iza Calzado and Sofia Pablo as Dom's respective sister and nephew are too simply written and directed to be interesting, too vague to be the kind of love that can inspire Dom to scale sacrificial heights, their scenes together and parting too soppily conceived for my taste. 

More convincing is the bond between the convicts-- Trillo's Dom, Lazaro's Edgardo, Raul Morit's Ador, Gerard Acao's Pol to name a few. As in Sing Sing the prisoners' shared experience feels stronger, even if these are just actors and not actual convicts (as in Greg Kwedar's film): we spent time with them, we know what they've been through, we know them far better than we know Dom's niece and sister. When they mourn we feel their grief, and know it's honestly earned.