Metro Manila 2014

Oscar Ramirez, a rice farmer from Banaue, Ifugao Province, moves his family to Metro Manila in search of a steadier life after his crops fail. They initially luck into a cheap room, but the place is a scam and the next day the police evict them for squatting. With nowhere else to go, they relocate to a vacant shanty in the harsh slums of Tondo, a neighborhood thick with crime. Oscar eventually lands a job as a security officer for Manila Armored Couriers, his military background helping him stand out among the other guards.

On Oscar’s first day on the job, he and his new partner Ong swap stories. Ong reveals that his previous partner was killed during a failed robbery six months earlier. Oscar shares his own painful memory from years ago, when he worked at a silk factory and a man named Alfred Santos was forced into armed robbery on a passenger airline after their family business was wrecked by a rival company. Oscar still carries the burden of feeling he should have stood up for Alfred, who died leaping from the plane with loot.

Ong, sensing the need for security and options, offers Oscar and his family a spare apartment in Makati. Meanwhile, Mai, Oscar’s partner at home, lands a job as a nightclub hostess in Makati and discovers she is pregnant. Her boss hints that Mai’s nine-year-old daughter Angel could be exploited for “special clients” if her pregnancy becomes too obvious, adding a grim layer of danger to their already precarious move to the city.

A routine delivery run brings Oscar and Ong into a tense conversation about corruption. After delivering handouts to a rapper who doubles as a drug dealer, they notice a black Honda Civic stalking them. A group of men heads toward Ong, and Oscar follows on foot to intervene, only to uncover that the gang is somehow connected to Ong. The truth comes out: Ong had taken a security box after the failed robbery and was scheming with the gang to stage another robbery and have himself “debriefed” at the company’s processing center. He also tries to coerce Oscar into helping by promising to frame him as the man who hid the box in their apartment.

The plan falls apart when Ong realizes the man confronting him is not a fellow gang member but the one who escaped when his former partner was killed; that man knocks Ong dead. Oscar is left with the grim duty of delivering Ong’s personal effects and severance pay to Ong’s widow, Dora.

Back home, Oscar learns that Dora and Mai already know about the security box, and the box itself has been hidden under the floor. Oscar and Mai face a difficult choice about what to do with it. Mai bluntly tells him that moving to the city might have been a mistake, but the danger isn’t over.

One night, after a delivery, Oscar sneaks into the processing center to duplicate the box key after taking an imprint of it and stealing another key. He’s quickly caught on security cameras and fatally shot. The company, misled by the imprint, rushes armed men to the address of a drug dealer client, while JJ, Oscar’s new partner, delivers Oscar’s personal effects to Mai. She finds a clay imprint of the key inside a locket she had previously found and, after duplicating the key, she flees the city with her children by bus, a money-filled rucksack between her feet. The film closes with Oscar’s narration, reflecting on the consequences of choices, desperation, and the fragile line between survival and crime.