KC’s first scene is a dance sequence that leads to her first fight scene with a male customer who wants to bed her. Her other fight scene is an extended and ferocious one with a Chinese girl in an opium and gambling den. She’s also shown dancing sexily on a rooftop that leads to a shootout in the narrow alleys of a slum area then she shoots it out with the bad guys. And we must say she really did very well. Mama Sharon would be proud.
The film is Chito Rono’s personal tribute to the gangster film genre popularized in Hollywood by underworld characters like John Dillinger, Scarface, Al Capone. Locally, we have hoodlum films like “Asiong Salonga” that jumpstarted the career of Erap and “Nardong Putik” which made Sen. Ramon Revilla Sr. an action star. “Boy Golden” is about Arturo Porcuna, who zoomed to fame in the early 60s for killing the son of actress Alicia Vergel in a soda fountain.
Rono has taken a lot of liberties in telling Porcuna’s story. He starts with Boy Golden (Jeorge Estregan) just out of prison to take revenge on his mortal enemy, Razon (John Estrada), who allegedly raped and killed his sister, Baby. In real life, we know Baby wasn’t really killed by Razon because she became the wife of the late actor-director Leroy Salvador and is the mother of actress Deborah Sun (who is featured in “Boy Golden” in a cameo role.) Baby’s own life was filmed by the late Danny Zialcita in the much acclaimed film, “Hindi sa Iyo ang Mundo, Baby Porcuna” which won Beth Bautista an Urian best actress award in 1978 playing the title role, with the late Anthony Alonzo playing her brother Boy Golden.
We’ll write a longer review about Rono’s film later. Suffice it to say for now that we love it. After “Kimmy Dora Kiyemeng Prequel”, it’s our second best picture in the current filmfest.
