As a portrait of a city caught between heaven and hell, Manila in the Claws of Neon is unmatched-no other Filipino film looks or feels quite like it. The film offers a simple, episodic plot: a young provincial named Julio Magadia comes to the city to look for his lost love, Ligaya Paraiso, and loses himself in the hellhole that is metro Manila. If the characters in this film don't benefit from the three-dimensionality of the best screenwriting, they-from the leads down to the teeming extras-are blessed with that intense, Brocka-mandated quality of people struggling furiously to hold onto every miserable scrap of life. From its opening shot of littered sidewalks and choked-up canals, to its final one of Julio cowering at the bottom of a dead-end alley, Manila is a series of voluptuous and raw, honest images. Its visuals defined “the Manila look” for practically every noir that followed.