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.

Some people were pointing out that there was nothing new shown in this movie that was not already shown in previous films. However since this is the first Mano Po movie I have watched I actually found the screenplay satisfactory. Nothing great but nonetheless it was ample. One thing that I found refreshing was the fact that this film was less of a mellow dramatic soap opera type of drama, which is prevalent in Philippine movies. Yes there are no shouting and slapping matches in this one. There were some sub-plots, which seemed unnecessary such as the story of the children of Lilia.In terms of performances, I thought that the lead actors did a splendid job in acting out their roles. Vilma Santos did a great job and really deserved her best actress honour at the MMFF. Certainly her efforts overshadowed those of here co-stars, Christopher De Leon and Jay Manalo. It's a shame really that her duties in Lipa are keeping her from other movies. Eddie Garcia, I thought could have done a better job in delivering his lines. I realize that he is playing a character that was not that fluent in Filipino but some of his words were just garbled and found it hard to understand.My only gripe maybe in the casting of Jay Manalo as the husband of Lilia. In the story Manalo is portrayed as the same age as De Leon and Santos which frankly I find hard to believe since Manalo looks many years younger.In terms of production, I thought Regal Films did a good job in setting an overall atmosphere by bringing in good costumes and props. It was also nice to see them speaking in Chinese so as to make the situations more authentic and believable.

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.