The best Phillip Salvador’s crime movies

Mobster Asiong Salonga (ER Ejercito) rules the mean streets of Manila with an iron fist—until he is betrayed by a trusted friend. Manila Kingpin is based on the story of the notorious Tondo, Manila, gang leader Nicasio “Asiong” Salonga, whose true-to-life accounts had been portrayed in several movie versions since 1961 (starring Joseph Estrada). It is also the first Filipino major film produced in black-and-white in the 21st century as well as the returning action genre movie. Before the film was shown, Tikoy Aguiluz requested the producers, through his lawyers, that his directorial credits in the film and promotional tools be removed because the final version of the film can no longer be described as his after the producers made a reedit, re-shoot and music mixing without his involvement. He also demanded that he be allowed to make a director's cut of the film.

The year before the Edsa revolt in a remote barrio, cult fanatics brutally kill a foreigner priest who administered the last rites to an alleged rebel summarily executed himself by the very group. In the city upon the toppling of the Marcos regime, an ex-priest leads a crew of political detainees in jubilation. After his release, he marries his human rights activist-girlfriend and decides to join a fact-finding mission that will bring him to the scene of the heinous crime a year ago. There the cultists continue to slaughter suspected communist rebels and terrorize the villagers. A native of the village is the ex-priest's old flame who turns out to have a seven-year-old son by him.

A groom takes his city bride to his hometown to settle in his father's house. Struck by her uncanny resemblance to his dead wife, the patriarch is driven to lust after his daughter-in-law. When things come to a head, a violent family quarrel ensues and leads to tragedy. A middle-aged spinster recounts the tale to reveal her identity and trace the downfall of the landowning clan trapped in the past.

A worker nicknamed Turing finds himself in a quandary when the printing press where he is hired as a casual is hit by a strike. As his wife badly needs medication after getting pregnant, he is forced to sign a waiver inhibiting him from joining any mass action in exchange for a wage advance from his employer. Left with no choice, he turns scab and is ostracized by his friends and colleagues. At the hospital where the wife undergoes treatment, she would not be released until all the bills have been fully paid. The situation further heads for the worse when the firm is finally shut down. Turing opts for a desperate move.