Movie deals with issues that still go on today in 2016. Movie showed true poverty and desperation.

Manila in the Claws of Neon starts with a black and white credits sequence, very much in a documentary style, establishing from the off that it is a portrait of Manila. And when it turns to color, it nevertheless retains that gritty, natural (and naturalistic in the literary sense), feeling of cinema verite. This is the Philippines in 1975, but it could be an urban center in any poor region, at any time in history, where people suffering in rural areas flock to the big city to find fortune, but mostly find a world that wants to abuse them. Though Julio's quest to find his girlfriend, the victim of human trafficking, is compelling, it nevertheless often feels like an excuse for him to be in Manila so he can experience first and second hand the injustice, inequity and corruption on offer in Manila. Though Julio makes easy friends throughout, many of them come to terrible fates, and several of their stories are told rather than seen. This is a very depressing movie. Downer or not, there's one scene that feels indelible to film canon, and it's essentially the climax where Julio gets a certain piece of bad news as women cackle at a nearby table. A masterful moment of point of view realism.

Google translates jarudet's comment thus: Unique Filipino film . Hopefully I watch on Pinoy acts like this