MovieChat Forums > Metro Manila (2013) Discussion > *SPOILER* Is it just me, or is there a p...

*SPOILER* Is it just me, or is there a plot hole?


I watched the movie today and overall quite enjoyed it. Good pacing and tension, I thought.

However, I have a key question (no pun intended): didn't Ong tell Oscar that in the previous hold-up, the company was told 2 boxes had been affected (one damaged by ink when opened by robbers, the other "missing" - assumed taken by robbers but actually kept by Ong)? Wouldn't the security company's keys to both boxes then have been confiscated/destroyed until the boxes were recovered - in that case, why is the key to the missing box still hanging in the key cabinet?

Appreciate if someone could put me right about this if I've remembered this part wrongly, I'm quite niggled by this!

By the way, if anyone knows, is it common for security companies to have a copy of the keys to these boxes? I thought the security company's role is only to transport stuff: keys can be held by the end-users, where is the need for the security company to have a copy of the key too?

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You remembered right but I think the answer is that having the company's copy of the key in the cabinet is fine - what they would have confiscated would be the client's copy. Make sense??

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my question is this. Y did Oscar have to start shooting after imprinting the key inside the necklace? If he would've let the boss catch him in the hallway or whatever & give up, he would've just got fired or maybe a little jail time? The company never thought to look in the necklace anyway & gave it to his wife. He would've gotten the money eventually

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I'm just trying to make sense of Oscar's plan and thoughts, but my reading is that if he lived, the security company would try to investigate further. They would probably look at the footage and other evidence more closely, and possibly examine his wife or Ong's wife if they can connect it.

They would question him to no end and would most likely succumb to their scrutiny. The boss, Buddha, insinuated this notion at the debriefing after Ong's death. With no other evidence, the gambit with the other key and box worked, because it felt like a sufficient explanation for Oscar's actions.

Good movie. It's somewhat like a more lyrical and less outlandish Breaking Bad. Really liked its atmosphere and could feel Oscar and his family's downtrodden plight through the poor Filipino metropolitan setting. The story would work in other cities, so a remake is likely on the horizon. But without the film's immersive use of Manila as its greatest strength, why bother.

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Yes, a great movie with a clever ending. I enjoyed it

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I'm with svocchipinti; and of course they eventually would have discovered the old switcharoo on the surveillance tapes but Oscar would be long gone by then spending the money with his family.
Furthermore the switch from an honest hardworking and decent man to a criminal who takes a shot at his boss was a bit too unrealistic for me

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I think his theory was, if I die my wife gets all of my personal belongings returned to her, if I am arrested my personal belongings are entered into evidence for the eventual trial. My wife and children need the money today or tomorrow, not 5 years from now.

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That's actually a very good point johnhelv.


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I think you are probably quite right, but there almost always seems to have to be an ability to suspend disbelief in movies. I don't think I have seen one, possibly ever, and certainly mostly not with suspenseful or "thriller"-type films, in which everything effortlessly hangs together.

I'm wondering if Oscar knew for sure he would be killed. Or, that is, would things have turned out differently if he had been able to get all of the screws unscrewed? Also, someone later felt he had undergone too radical a character shift. I don't think his having stolen the locket was too great a departure given what he planned to do; he couldn't buy it or there would be a record he had gotten it just that day and it might come under scrutiny. As far as shooting at his boss goes, I thought they shot first.

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