So Closure

Nothing says out of town bus ride better than Mindless Action Movies. Last year, on our way to Laguna, we were subjected to a movie with a Vin Diesel look alike, but only more Asian and with a lot of parkour thrown in. Also, the subtitles were in Turkish or some other language.


A couple of weekends ago, on our way back to Manila from Batangas, our ride was a blue Ceres bus. It was swanky and new and there were individual reading lights and two (!) monitors to watch the Mindless Action Movie in. The driver put in So Close (2002) and we didn't sleep a wink or notice the traffic at all. That or we are just easily entertained.


I haven't seen the movie in a really long while. There's an assassin called Computer Angel who uses something called Panorama, a program which connects all CCTVs in the world and hooked up via satellite, which allows Computer Angel's sister to always be a step ahead of being caught. A newly-returned Forensics Expert gets obssessed with solving the Computer Angel assassination, and in turn, Computer Angel's sister gets obssessed with the Forensics Expert as part of the long honored trope of Cops and Robbers, as seen in works of literary classics like Les Miserables.


But this is no Victor Hugo masterpiece. And really, all you need to know is that it stars a trio of gorgeous girls--Shu Qi, Karen Mok and Vicky Zhao--and there are amazing fight sequences in bath tubs and elevators extending into parking lots, with handcuffs, and lots of slow motion hair porn set to The Carpenters. Here they are:

The yellow track suits remind me of Kill Bill, but when I checked Kill Bill came out in 2003-04, so Corey Yuen's stiletto fight fest was ahead by a year. But then again, it's Tarantino and it's probably an homage or something.

We were all happy campers in that bus until the long amazing car chase comes to an end and the driver pulls the plug on the movie. WTF, Ceres Bus Driver? There's still an entire 20 minutes and one last spectacular action sequence where the Forensics Expert (Karen Mok) and Computer Angel's Sister (Vicky Zhao) team up for one last hit to clear their names.

You don't shut it down when we were just approaching Ortigas and it's still a long way from Cubao. And while we're at it, Dear Ceres Bus Driver,  a bunch of us were clearly expecting to be delivered to the Araneta Center. When your signboard says Cubao, it better be a proper station and not by the chaotic wayside of EDSA. Also, we almost liked your bus until you cut off our movie and dropped us off in front a bus station that did not say "Ceres Bus Lines." No wonder people were grumbling and grumpy. We needed closure. It's like the blue balls of long distance bus rides. That is Just Not Done.

Moral of the Story: Always See Things Off Until The Very, Very End. Also: If You Promised To Do It, Go All The Freaking Way.

Now that rant is out of the way, let's return to a safe happy place. Have a little sisterly catfight: