One wonders why a Filipino movie piles up all the Hollywood clichés so thoroughly? Having an eye on the guys who get piles of money out from their work is not necessarily a bad thing, but come on. It is a sad thing that Hollywood's "superiority" is regarded as this vast that even all the errors are mirrored. Or maybe Mark A. Reyes just couldn't come up with a good idea?Whatever, the stuff goes like this:In the year 2021 Earth is down and out as the Balang (evil aliens, you know) have come 'round and kicked ass. The whole plot revolves around the town of Paraiso – which looks like every other bombed-out ruin, but what the heck. At the start, some kids are of course out of the safe perimeters on their own (sounds familiar?), but no fear, they not only meet the soon-to-be love-interest of the hero and her mute sister (gone mute because of the terrible experience to see her parents die or whatnot – I think it's cliché No. 3) but also are rescued by Crisval.There are also some Mutanos (mutated human collaborators, who'd thought), shooting people but getting their asses handed by some guys on BMX bicycles (reminiscent of "BMX Bandits" – ergo very inane in this context). Also, as this is a post-apocalyptic movie, the warrior of the future has to wear some put-together armour of plastic, at best in glaring yellow, red or blue – Power Rangers go! So far so totally daft. The aliens of course want to destroy Paraiso and so we get some "jealous guy blows the whistle on Paraiso, Mutano guy defects his alien masters, people run around aimlessly, annoying children are allowed to have speaking parts, etc. I confess that I skipped some parts – couldn't stand it.In the end, Crisval has of course build several trash-robots and kaput's the Balang's battle droids. Hurray!But to come back to the cliché – the hero crew: – ex-military men with dead family – good-looking wanna-be rebel with father-issues (with a hairstyle that time-warps scenes featuring him back to the 1990s) – goofy technician – blind girl which of course has visions of imminent doom – little girl who is able to teleport (explanation for this one? Nah.) – love-interest girl who truly evil overlord's daughterNeat? Yeah. Also they have this children-do-totally-cool-things scenes like: Annoying kid A puts grenade into mouth of Balang soldier; Balang soldier being a total moron does not get it out, falls down, lands on gas bottles; grenade explodes, gas bottles explode, take off and hit Balang spaceship over town, which explodes. What? Sorry, my brain just went "pop" and I thought I saw a cartoon-show for 6-years old and not a movie aimed at adults ...Also a very low point of the movie is the totally inability of the Balang: They come from space with a vast ship. They kick Earth's ass – BUT! before the counter-attack at the end we hear that they were defeated in the USA, Europe, China, etc. Seems like they were defeated anywhere than around Paraiso. Also, while they have vast spaceships, they have no soldiers. They like to create the Mutanos to do all the fighting. Typically superior alien-things them, eh? Also, the Balang themselves look not unlike any enemy from the Power Rangers series – like plastic and all. And if they show up in a fight at all (happens twice in the whole movie) they are shitty. One gets handled by Crisval's fist robot (which moves with the speed of a dead slug), while the other ... read above. All the inability to be really frightening, let alone believable invaders from outta space is peaked by the introductino of the Balang overlord – who happens to be a slimy thingy that cannot talk or do anything else than sit around in its hibernation chamber and die while fighting crap-robot A. Makes these. An alien species which relies on the "leadership" of a slimy thing that goes "hiss, spit, grow" all the time ... All their idiocy and inaptness accumulate in the end-fight, when they show up to vanquish their enemies with about fifty men. Right, if I was a big space-invader I would also send fifty mutated slaves to deal with a whole city of ... ah, whatever. And their war-mechs are of course that badly build that they can be trashed by some robots made from scrap. Meh.So the Mutanos do the whole evil-villaining, and they are as clichéd as you want them. Their leader is named Hades (dunno what's his name in the Filipino version) and he is the "roll eyes in a threatening way", pale, hidden under cowl guy. Like a D-class Palpatine. The rest are the usual blowtorch goggle wearing henchmen (these goggles made a career as SciFi accessory, no?), peaked by the evil-ponytail-guy, who gets a cyberhand in the course of the movie and in the hilarious showdown does the "try to fight cool but for naught" fight with the mayor's son – after they of course have jumped out of their big fighting robots. The Mutano super-strength, etc. seems lacking against some not-so-good-looking Capoeira-moves. Not that one notices by then, 'cause the whole flick is full of silly, manga-style fights which go nowhere but show that one guy in a yellow plastic-armour can gun down about 150 Mutano-henchmen. (They just enter the fight and go down – again, and again ... yawn).All in all a very enjoyable movie about some Mecha, inapt storytelling, lousy characters, lousy actors, totally lousy aliens and so on. It might have worked as a low-grade "be sure to switch brain off" anime. So it is just painful to watch.Oh, and they have an open ending ... part two?

Resiklo is a sci-fi flick about the future where aliens are enslaving humans, though not without some resistance. The plot involves resistance in the Philipines, where hero-type Commander Crisval is much feared and despised by the invaders. Part "Road Warrior", part "Transformers", part...eh, well a few other familiar movies came to mind while watching it, Resiklo is not bad for a Filipino movie, if you've seen many recently. The title, which means "recycle", seems to have ecological significance, but don't as me to explain. In spite of violent themes, this is basically a family movie, one the middle school boys might enjoy. While not up to American standards, the special effects are not bad. Some of the corniest aspects of the movie come from its desire to have "cool" dialog; this made the movie more entertaining, but not the way the producers had intended.

Pros: The CG is quite decent and very good for Philippine movie standards. The designs are good and production value is quite high (again, going by Philippine movie standards). Although, the anime-style (exagerrated form over function) costume for the humans looks too tacky and doesn't work very well on the big screen. The robot fight scene was fun and looked great.Cons: EXPOSITION, EXPOSITION, EXPOSITION. The director is a horrible storyteller and everything is done through exposition. The dialogue and acting will make you roll your eyes and cringe multiple times throughout. Poor character development, in fact a lot of the characters are unnecessary. Motivations for most characters aren't even expressed at all. Inconsistent tone. Comic relief scenes are scattered everywhere, all of them very corny.

"Resiklo" (literally, "Recycle") certainly wouldn't be the worst film this side of the planet you'd see this time of the year. But any hope that this mega-budgeted movie (at least by Philippine standards) would enthrall will depend on how high you place your expectations as much as where you place them. This Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) entry offers a grand production design and decent CGI although the robots are only fun in small doses. Keep your expectations at bay and that may suffice to vindicate P120 off your pocket. But it's still a sad shadow of what could have been a terrifically tense Filipino sci-fi.In 2021, the Earth is invaded by alien beings (Balangs) who then engage humankind into a worldwide war, destroying all the planet's natural resources in the process. In a post-apocalyptic Philippines, a band of survivors live in an undisclosed place they call "Paraiso," an underground society so hidden everyone else thinks it's a myth. Nevertheless, the people of this place fend themselves through their sheer ingenuity, using recycled scraps they regularly scavenge from the outside world for their basic necessities.But eventually their hideout is located by the Mutanos, a group of beings who were once humans, but were converted by the Balangs into a superior mutated sentient. A chance encounter between Crisval (Bong Revilla), one of the residents of "Paraiso," and the son of the leader of the Mutanos leads to the death of the latter, and ignites the wrath of the Mutanos and wages a war against the humans.The concept is actually fun but the perfunctory and predictable script, plus the embarrassingly wooden acting from Revilla limp this film right out of the door. Written and directed by Mark Reyes, "Resiklo" was supposedly pitched as an idea for a television series, but eventually landed onto the big screen courtesy of Senator Bong Revilla, who stars and co-produces. Reyes has a comparatively more coherent hold of the narrative this time than in "Mulawin: The Movie" two years back, but the rush to cover the expansive mythology shows through this anecdotal sort of a movie, following a number of characters from plot point to plot point but not offering a whole lot on the way of a sensible story. And the dialogues are written in dreadfully serious manners, it's hard not to force a groan when Revilla utters lines like "Overstaying na kayo, dapat na kayong i-deport (You should be deported for overstaying)!" This leads to the film's biggest problem: it's boring. There's action scenes to be sure, but most of the film involves people walking around looking for scraps and faux-politicians talking about what they intend to do next to survive. The bland dramatic scenes then are punctuated by action scenes that are awkwardly edited and painfully lacking in the sort of visual detail that really makes them adrenaline-pumping. The movie's selling point of robots battling each other occur so short and so fast, and the rendering of the animation is at times so inorganic it's distracting. Personally, only one fight scene stands out and surprisingly it's that of Empress Schuck, where her blind character fights off Mutanos soldiers with her walking cane. Sexy.Which makes you wish that the girl gets more butt-kicking screen time. Or maybe instead of playing a doctor (which takes a lot of time buying into), Michelle Madrigal were cast in the lead role wearing skimpy outfits, gunning the enemies out, ala Milla Jovovich. It wouldn't make the movie anymore logical, but it certainly would make it more interesting.