Zyrus desamparado biography

Death and melodrama

A movie inspired by the late actor Rudy Fernandez a few months after his death sounds exploitative, but thankfully, Jose Javier Reyes' "Magkaibigan" is an effective melodrama that re-establishes Christopher de Leon as perhaps the country's most effective and yet restrained actors, making him sublimely effective in Reyes' tearjerker.

After last year's OFW-themed "Katas ng Saudi," Reyes teams up once more with Jinggoy Estrada in a no-frills story of two best friends, Atoy (de Leon) and Ruben (Estrada), and their respective families as they come to terms with Atoy's inevitable death due to cancer.

While not as visually lush nor as extravagantly produced, this enthralling drama is more emotionally sincere than Mark Meily's "Baler."

While the film's story is a one-trick pony that veers dangerously close to running out of steam long before the end credits roll, the performances, if