"I can't take anything that comes from evil" - Geron Busabos

Film of the week was "Geron Busabos" which won FAMAS (Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences) awards for Best picture, best story, best cinematography, best actor for Joseph "Erap" Estrada, and best child actor for Boy Alvarez.

This is one of the films that established the "hero of the masses" persona that Joseph Estrada used to become the mayor of San Juan, then Senator, then VP under Ramos, then President of the Philippines, which led to numerous EDSA rallies both for and against his ouster.

Geron, son of Quiapo, is poor but honest fellow, who fights only when he has to (which is often) and fights for people who find themselves in an unfair fight. The people around him must keep the same moral code. He takes in an orphan boy (Beto), lives next to a dance hall girl who is in love with him (Betty), and he himself falls in love with a young mestiza sampaguita seller (Nena) (nicknamed Miss White Leghorn, because her father is an American who left 18 years ago) whose mother despises him. He later takes on the local extortionists from harrassing the local shop keepers in the market. The movie stars many of the real people of Quiapo along with a 3 man band consisting of the blind musicians from the street. The movie ends with a dramatic gunfight through Quiapo where he single handedly takes on the gang of extortionists.

Betty is his smoking buddy and confidant but he never really returns the love she has for him. Nena's mother continues to pine away for Nena's father, who promised that he would return, but left with the American ships. They call the mother a pier-girl. Nena's mother wants her mestiza daughter to marry out of their impoverished level, a rich widower perhaps.

The enemies of the poor seem to be the poor themselves, fighting, stealing. The police that patrol Quiapo consists of a lowly Sargeant, who unlike the others cops, isn't corrupt and living the high life. When they try to leave the streets of Quiapo, get treatment for the young boy from a hospital, they face a world so foreign full of paperwork. When the other street people ask why they wouldn't admit the boy, Geron can only answer, "I don't know." Then again, the doctors and nurses in the hospital are more concerned with paperwork and reports before treating anyone there.

Geron heartbroken over his love interest, attempts to get a taste of the kind of world he can't give his love, represented by a high end club. They seat him after he shows that he has some cash. But one of the upper class patrons hanging out with an American Marilyn Monroe look-a-like, tries to pay him money to leave. A fight ensues. Geron struggles to apologize to the American woman, but doesn't understand English. She tells him that this isn't his kind of place, he doesn't belong here because he is kind. Then there's the most dramatic kissing scene of the movie between them, where he realizes that he really is in love with Nena and must go to her.

Their world of Quiapo streets is hard and desperate but it's the world that Geron understands. It's where he's strong and a protector, where he can help the people he cares for, where he can use his ability to fight makes everything right. It's a place where a person has to forsake morality to get more money or if they are lucky to be mestizo marry their way out.

The movie is filled with cameos of Estrada's movie: Fernando Poe Jr and Eddie Garcia.

Estrada got voted in as the hero of the movies, who would bring that hero to life as a hero for the masses. But the tough guy persona that solves everything with fists and maybe even a gun if he can get it, proved to be a deadly solution in real life and there was no one to edit out the miscues.