The painstaking set-up for the heist is both admirable in its detail and off-putting in the slick way it exploits poverty, reducing social drama to a genre gimmick.

Proof that you can't go wrong with the same old story.

As bleak as a Dickens novel, yet twinned with a contemporary heist drama, Metro Manila straddles two worlds in telling the story of a desperate family man who moves from a small farm to the city.

Metro Manila sports some excellent visual sequences, and manages to abstain from veering into overly soapy melodramatics... At its core, the film features a dynamite lead performance from Macapagal.