Ironically, they gain access to the local police force during a brief lull in the killings, as Duterte feigns an attempt to rein in the murderous mayhem by announcing policing reforms. The Hollywood Reporter, LLC is a subsidiary of Prometheus Global Media, LLC. Sarbil, a gifted cameraman who won a cinematography Emmy for his and Jones’s 2017 Frontline episode on Mosul, shoots the nighttime raids with a hot, athletic immediacy that the aforementioned Mendoza (or even Michael Mann) would covet in a fictional context; bodies are silhouetted in the glare of emergency lights, though amid the shadows, we also get close-up glimmers of strained faces on all sides of the law. 12:36 PM PDT 10/11/2019 by Justin Lowe FACEBOOK; TWITTER; EMAIL ME; Courtesy of PBS FRONTLINE. At first, this tactic appears to be working, as Jones and Sarbil ride along with a special operations unit under Modequillo’s direct command that appears to be spending more time talking to residents than harassing them. This is a slick and stylish documentary, with extraordinarily high production values. Unlike most other cities though, The Philippines’ war on drugs is an open urban conflict, as police and shadowy, roaming gangs of vigilantes (widely rumored to be off-duty cops) have killed thousands of drug dealers, addicts and suspects over the past several years.Orchestrating this chaotic internecine conflict, Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, a former big-city mayor who has been transformed under the national spotlight into a bombastic autocrat boasting a blustering Trumpian style, has sworn to wipe out drugs in the country. When they go after a local dealer named Jimmy, it’s all very by-the-book, as the cops serve a search warrant, locate Jimmy’s stash and arrest him with a minimum of force.Joining another patrol with the force’s SWAT team, a unit armed with automatic rifles pursuing paramilitary urban-warfare tactics, the filmmakers reveal that residents fear the police far more than they do the drug dealers, who are often their friends and neighbors. Although police-led killings in Caloocan initially drop after Modequillo takes over, extrajudicial murders committed by mysterious assassins on motorbikes soon spike, calling the commander’s leadership into question and throwing the district into cowering chaos again.Keeping in mind that the filmmakers can only capture a sliver of the city’s sprawling drug violence, it quickly becomes clear that Manila faces an overwhelming confluence of lawlessness, drug trafficking and political demagoguery. James Jones and Olivier Sarbil's docu-thriller heads chillingly into the frontline of Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte's corrupt drug war.The war on drugs has never taken more literal form than under the command of Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte, who rose to power on a pledge to rid the country of dealers and addicts alike — and delivered on his promise in the bloodiest fashion possible, with police summarily executing thousands of people over an 18-month period. Ruthless nighttime raids are followed by celebratory karaoke gatherings; it’s a living, and the filmmakers are somehow witnesses to all of it. If the body count seems to drop for a period, alarm bells ring when victims with drug-trade affiliations start turning up dead in murkier circumstances.The war has simply gone underground, with police (dehumanized in grueling training rituals to which the film also remarkably gains access) running brutal death squads. A riveting account of the consequences of unfettered demagoguery. Directed by James Jones, Olivier Sarbil. With Rodrigo R. Duterte, Jemar Modequillo. In their kinetic, pavement-pounding doc “On the President’s Orders,” filmmakers Though “On the President’s Orders” will probably find the bulk of its audience when it arrives on television and streaming platforms — Frontline and the BBC’s international documentary label Storyville are producing partners — it’s a wholly cinematic, sensory experience, with straight-ahead reportage electrified by glaring streetlights and a panicked urban wall of sound. Methamphetamines, often the drug of choice for the most impoverished, pose the biggest threat, but marijuana and illegal pills also turn up. Their frankness is so revealing that the International Criminal Court, currently investigating Duterte’s drug war, has requested a copy of the film to enter as evidence in their deliberations.Sarbil and Jones, battle-hardened by the experience of shooting their Emmy-winning Frontline segment Whatever the findings of the International Criminal Court, a respected global justice institution that Duterte has repeatedly discouraged and attempted to delegitimize, the president faces a record of alleged human rights abuses that will tarnish his legacy well into the future. On the flip side, the film follows the growing awareness of this corruption among civilians, most affectingly via the arc of young siblings Axel and Fujiko, whose father, one of many on the police’s watch list, is shot dead in broad daylight. Axel is certain Modequillo’s forces are responsible; the building resistance from a restless public to callous authorities amplifies the film’s brittle, snappish tension. The thesis of On the President’s Orders isn’t terribly original, but in a needlessly roundabout way, it makes its case that these killings are not the work of isolated individuals, but the product of a top-down culture that stems from Duterte's assent. It’s a harrowing, humbling film that through its visually stunning look and intense storytelling, demonstrates with great skill the heart of darkness of this part of the world, illustrating the horrifically … The 2017 policy shift allows new chief Jemar Modequillo to take command of a thousand officers, many newly installed in Caloocan after the wholesale dismissal of their predecessors.Modequillo, a gruff, burly man, attempts to charm the locals with community meetings, free meals and expressions of support for the president’s anti-drug campaign, warning his officers to step up arrests while reducing incidental deaths.