A heart warming movie that shows how Rizal runs his life. Marilou Diaz-Abaya, the director, made a very good choice of choosing Cesar Montano as Jose Rizal and Joel Torre as his counterpart as the Crisostomo Ibarra and afterward Simoun in his very proud novel, Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo.This movie Jose Rizal is a great explanation of the Philippine tragic history. I didn’t suffer the 3-hours-movie long. It shows nationalism and heroism in a nonviolent manner, though, there were instances that the characters speak in Spanish and it’s hard to appreciate unless I will read the subtitles. I couldn’t see that Cesar Montano and other characters were having difficulties in reciting their Spanish lines.
The plot was full of twists and turns yet still not difficult to follow but it is so confusing to watch because there were too many flashbacks and you won’t even know if it is still in flashback or not. Apparently, some scenes are brutal, and some scenes are unsuitable for young kids such as the bed scenes in the first part wherein the Spanish priest with the used of his power tried to rape the Filipino woman.The amusing surprise was the dedication of Cesar Montano to his role and matched with the good actor Jhong Hilario, played as his servant and a great actor Jaime Fabregas as Rizal’s defense attorney, Lt. Taviel de Andrade, they made the story of Rizal’s life easy to understand.
Anyway, it is a very good movie with the combination of a professional movie director Marilou Diaz-Abaya and multi-awarded actor Cesar Montano with the help of other actors and actresses that made the movie more pleasurable. After watching this film documenting Rizal’s life I couldn’t help but to feel the sense of pride being him as the Philippine National Hero. I recommend this movie to people who would like to know more about Philippine history and to anybody especially Filipinos. It was an ideal blend of Philippine national hero’s life and his two proud novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo
