Vilma Santos plays the prominent businesswoman who is widely admired and respected in Manila's Chinatown. Christopher Deleon is her former lover. Jay Manalo, as the clueless husband, completes the triangle.Mano Po 4 isn't a movie about the Filipino Chinese community. It's just another typical Vilma Santos movie that has her reciting a litany of lines that had been written with hopes that they would be added to her gallery of overwrought dramatic scenes. She's given one big scene that requires her to scream for help after a car mishap in a deserted street in the dead of night. She's done this before, several times.She even has a big Meryl Streep scene that has her shamelessly aping Streep's moving scene in the car from The Bridges of Madison County. But audiences aren't moved by Santos since it's just Santos trying to outdo Streep. For Santos, that means overacting it to the hilt.Christopher Deleon gives his trademark hammy performance. His acting is more mannered than ever. These two veterans ought to get acting lessons from Jay Manalo. He doesn't need talky dialog or histrionics to get the quiet anguish of the husband across. And still he looks much too young to play Santos' husband. (They were supposed to be high school sweethearts!) The film is dominated by talky scenes. It doesn't seem to go anywhere, not specially under the unimaginative direction of Joel Lamangan.Even the script's attempt at being socially relevant is forced. Santos, as the leading businesswoman in the Chinese community, is a staunch activist who publicly bewails the crimes being committed against Chinese businessmen (kidnapping, extortion). With the way this angle is sloppily handled, the "relevance" tastes like bad medicine. It doesn't taste good and it doesn't do anything to cure the flaws of this movie. Not even if it's forced fed on us.

The performances of Christopher De Leon and Vilma Santos are great. It's a great movie, the director made a good job. The flow of events and the pace of the story are nicely plotted. You won't feel unease when Michael Lim (Christopher) come back to Lilia Chiong (Vilma) and interfered with her "happy" married life. Compare to the passed 2 Mano Po movies, Mano Po 3 doesn't have enough Chinese tales, it can stand alone as a pure love story movie without involvement of Chinese culture.In my personal opinion, if Christopher De Leon character was a pure Filipino, and if the reason why he was separated from Vilma was due to rejection from Vilma's Chinese parents, and Vilma was arranged-marriage "kai-siaw" to Paul (Jay Manalo), then this would be a better Chinese foundation as the background for Christopher and Vilma to met after 25 years.It might not be a happy ending, but it was a rational ending given the circumstances of the events. This movie will definitely make you cry in the end.

It is indeed a sad day in Philippine cinema when this movie, mano po 3 (which is an installment in a series of stories, totally unconnected with each other, about filipino-Chinese in the Philippines), won in the Metro Manila Film Festival. It is as if the film festival has turned into an award giving that celebrates mediocrity. What ever happened to the high standards that the film fest clung to in the past? Indeed, it is sad to see GERIATRIC actors Vilma Santos and Christopher de Leon portray roles that they have exceptionally portrayed before in their lustrous 40 years in Philippine show business. To even think of casting these superb actors in roles that are at least 15 years their junior, that defies their age, is indeed insulting to the intelligence of the Filipino viewers. But hey! Nobody's complaining! Right? In fact, they both won the Best Actors awards in the said film fest! Sad, sad, sad... (Trivia: It seems that Vilma Santos cannot appear in any movie without clinging to a white hankie, see for yourself!) Question: Is there a dearth of good Filipino actors? Why can't the director, Joel Lamangan, cast actors that befit the role... I used to admire Mr. Lamangan but after seeing this movie, I don't know anymore...And the movie is just a futile exercise in method acting,and is just full of empty rhetorics. I'm sure the Chinese community in the Philippines were scandalized by this shallow portrayal of their values, of their identity and of their personalities! I mourn for Philippine cinema! I'm sure Lino Brocka must be turning in his grave now for the sad state of the movies in the Philippines.

"Mano Po 3: My Love" is far better off than the previous Mano Po movies. If the other to MP movies talked about family and home, this 3rd franchise talks about the most universal language of all: Love.This is about Lilia Chiong-Yang (Vilma Santos) a Chinese-Filipino woman. She was torn from her first and only love, and ended up marrying the person she didn't want (Jay Manalo). One faithful day, she met up with her old love Michael (Christopher De Leon) and things began to get rocky then. He wanted her to choose between her family and the only man she truly loved.The good thing about this movie is she made a decision in the end.For me, this third and last installment was the best among the rest. The movie made me laugh, cry, angry, sad and everything else. That's really rare the Philippines' movie industry now. Vilma Santos did a wondrous job in portraying her role. After her 2-year absence in the movie industry, she still had the touch. The only thing i didn't like about the movie was Jay Manalo. He really was too young to be Vilma's husband in the movie. They were supposed to be the same age though, but remarkably he did a very good job playing his role as well. How can we not forget Boyet? He was marvelous! Without him, this movie wouldn't be the best one yet.People say this is such an ordinary love story, but in my eyes, this is the best Filipino movie ever made in my time. Teenagers like me and adults could easily understand the plot. I'm not surprised why when i tried to watch the movie, it was sold out. It's THAT good.