Dennis Hunter The base story features Adam, a security guard, who travels from California to the Philippines to attend his father's funeral. Shortly after his arrival in Manilla, a phone rings in his backpack. He answers it. A male voice tells him that his mother and sister are captives and will be killed if he (Adam) doesn't cooperate. The voice proceeds to send Adam by bus, taxi, motorized tricycle, and on foot through an urban landscape of busy streets, cramped apartments, a squatters' camp, a bank, a cockfighting arena, and a church. Adam's conversations with the voice cover murder, Islam, jihad, rebellion in Mindanao, and his family.Adam is commanded by the voice to engage in terrorist acts against innocent civilians in order to save his mother and sister. Moreover, the voice extorts Adam of money his deceased father had saved for him, his mother and sister. Like most persons in Adam's situation, Adam is compelled by fear to save his mother and sister, and comply with the voice's command. The movie is based on a TRUE story.Based on the story of the movie and common perceptions about current events, you may come to the conclusion that this movie deals with terrorism sponsored by Islamic extremists. The disturbing reality is that governments and, in particular, intelligence agencies, e.g. CIA, are the ONLY organizations so well-financed, methodical, callous and evil as to perpetrate such criminal acts. Ask yourself - How is the voice aware of Adam's whereabouts at every juncture in the movie? How is the voice aware of the money left by Adam's father to Adam? Why would the voice go ahead and torture Adam's mother and sister? The answer is that organizations such as the CIA are terrorizing innocent individuals and families to foment division among people, to induce individuals (fearing harm to their own family members, and indeed fearing God) to commit crimes on behalf of these organizations even as they fully believe that it is an Islamic extremist group. More disturbing than this fact alone, they can actually cause an individual to hear voices within their own mind (even though the movie depicted the use of cell phones). Indeed, they have the technology to see from the eyes and hear from the ears of nearly every individual in the world born in a hospital.Let's be clear about it: God is about LOVE, not HATE. Wake up to the reality - seek the truth!

poe426 All too often, budding filmmakers who undertake this particular kind of film end up making themselves look bad- as filmmakers. (Even seasoned professionals are fully capable of biting off more than they can chew, sometimes.) Rarely do beginners risk adding insult to injury by putting themselves at risk in front of- as well as behind- the camera. It's been done, of course (and will no doubt be done again... and again and again...), but it's seldom been done as well as it has here. CAVITE, while technically not a one-man show, is just about as close as one can get these days- and it's an impressive piece of work. Minimalist movie-making at its best. Even seasoned professionals could learn something from this one.

randonneur14 It didn't get off to a very good start with the impossible-to-see nearly black and bouncing shot of someone making their way through the dark streets of Manila, onto a Jeepney, followed by something, then cut to San Diego and our main character. We'll only find out later that it was our hero's father on a forced suicide bombing mission to save his family.Back in San Diego Adam gets two calls, one from his mother telling him to fly back to the Philippines, though again the reason isn't given that he is called back to attend his father's funeral, so we have no way of connecting the previous scene with these new characters? The second is from his presumedly white American girlfriend telling him she is going to get an abortion because he's such a loser with his crummy night security job, that she can't have a baby with him.Then he's off to Manila, via Taipei, just like my first visit to the Philippines, though luckily I didn't have the additional addiction to cigarettes to deal with on my 24 hours of flying, waiting, and changing planes, just SARS and a sore ass. He seems to have mastered the telephone system around the world though, while I was never able to use any phone in the Philippines, my calling card from AT&T completely useless.While he's sitting around the airport and calling his mom over and over we're left to guess that's he's never actually been to the Philippines before and doesn't even have enough sense to get a taxi and go to where they live or are staying. So we never know why he was raised in the US, while his mom, sister and previously his dad are all in the PH.From there we begin the "story" when he hears a ringing and à la The Matrix he finds a mysterious cell phone in a "Manila" envelope in his carry on bag, and on the other end, instead of "Morpheus," though suspiciously with the same ability to see everything Adam is doing, everywhere, and directs him similarly to the office scene in The Matrix, is a horrible Muslim extremist kidnapper from Mindanao, who's holding his mom and sister at rape and knife point if Adam doesn't do exactly as he's told. Which includes leaving his larger suitcase behind.Out on the streets Adam is introduced to the horrors of Manila, from children with no pants, to shanty towns, to burning fields of garbage, to people wading through polluted water. All of these scenes are obviously the actor and a cameraman walking around Manila while everyone is looking simply because they have a camera. But they make it seem as if they're all looking at Adam suspiciously, giving him the stink eye maybe, which isn't how the PH is at all, even for a tall white guy.After the wandering Adam gets into the action when he witnesses the murder of a "faggot" by a couple of thugs hired by the kidnapper, being forced to eat balut to distract him while his carry-on bag is stolen by a little kid, and finally he is told what exactly he has to do to get his family back: go to the bank and take out his Dad's $75K in reward money for ratting out the terrorists to the Army. He does this easily and at the cock fighting arena exchanges the money for his carry-on bag, which is now considerably heavier.The second part of his mission now becomes clear: he has to bomb a church full of people, but not suicide, he gets to walk away. Still he ponders the decision for a minute. Here's where most people will get confused by this movie but not I, and I will tell you: Adam doesn't go through with it out of selfishness. He doesn't chose the lives of the few he knows over the lives of many strangers, he decides to bomb those people because, as a Muslim himself he has been conditioned by his religious upbringing and egged on by the reminders from the kidnapper of the violence done to Muslims in the Philippines, he is easily convinced that it is the right thing to do! His conception of "jihad" is too slow and too hard, and he's already shown he's a loser with a crappy job.We never hear the bomb go off, never see him reunite with his family, and end with his ex-girlfriend telling him how she could never raise a kid to be a Muslim, further justification for everything he did. If the whole world's against you, why not bomb some kids? Many people are unsure if this message is eye-opening or we just watched an Islamic propaganda film? I'll assume the former until assured of the later. The major problem with this movie is any ignorant people watching this will assume that all these people in Manila are Muslims, when they're most certainly not, but instead are all Catholics, the effective state religion. The kidnapper's a Muslim, the main character is a Muslim, his thugs must be Muslim, the kid he hired to steal the guy's bag must be Muslim. No and no to the last two.Finally, the point of the story showing how poor the Filipinos are is lost in the confusion. They're not saying there are Muslim extremists because the people are poor, they're trying to say, "Look how poor the Filipinos are!" And in addition, "Hello, there are a few cells of Muslim terrorists from Mindanao plotting in Manila." The scene with the kid sharing his McDonald's with his grandma is the former point.

leilapostgrad Adam, a 32-year-old Filipino security guard from San Diego, must fly home to the Philippines after learning that his father is died. He lands at the Manila airport and waits for his mother to pick him up. She never does. He hears a ringing in his bag. It's a mysterious package with a ringing cell phone (think of The Matrix when Morpheus contacts Neo for the first time). Adam picks it up, and for the next hour, an Islamic extremist (who has kidnapped his mother and sister) threatens to kill Adam's family if he doesn't follow every single order he's given. Now that's suspense.I love that Cavite truly takes you down the streets of the Philippines, where people drink soda from a plastic bag and bet on cockfights (reminds me a lot of Mexico). Everything about this film is original and surprising. The only problems were technical (and hardly worth mentioning). One problem was the discontinuity of the sweaty shirt. Adam wears the same shirt throughout the film, and the shirt is sweatier at some points than at others. The other problem was believing that two cell phones batteries could last an entire day. Adam is constantly on the phone with his family's kidnapper, and he only runs out of battery once? I don't buy it. But I bought everything else.Equally as original as the plot of Cavite is the story about how this indie film found it's distribution. A U.T. class on advanced film producing promoted Cavite through the 2005 SXSW Film Festival and the 2005 Los Angeles Film Festival, and thanks to a deal with Mark Cuban's "Truly Indie" distribution initiative, Cavite is now showing at a theater near you, so check it out.