The true story of how the Philippines offered sanctuary to 1,200 European Jews is rendered as dull, unconvincing melodrama
In 1939, Philippines president Manuel Quezon gave sanctuary to 1,200 Jews from
Germany and Austria as other countries slammed their doors shut. Quezon, a classy political operator, wheeled and dealed to obtain visas for the refugees from
Washington, which controlled the borders of the Philippines, then a protectorate of the US. The story is a real-life political chess game with the makings of a gripping race-against-the-clock thriller; but here it drags out into sluggish, dull and unconvincing melodrama.
Raymond Bagatsing plays Quezon as a scotch-drinking, poker-playing statesman with movie-star charisma, riding a wave of public adulation. Indeed, a modicum of ego is the only flaw permitted in this saintly, rather bland character study. It’s not long after Kristallnacht, when Quezon is implored by poker buddy Alex Frieder (Billy Ray Gallion), a Jewish-American cigar manufacturer living in the Philippines, to rescue German Jews. They put an advert in a German newspaper for skilled Jewish workers. Dwight Eisenhower (David Bianco), then a military adviser to the Philippine government, is roped in to lobby the US government to extend the country’s visa quota.