Honor Thy Father
Honor Thy Father is a 2015 Philippine crime drama directed by Erik Matti, in which a couple ruined by a fraudulent investment scheme turn to robbery to save their family after their church refuses to help them. It stars John Lloyd Cruz, Meryll Soriano, and Tirso Cruz III, and premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.1 The same title also belongs to a 1973 American television film about the Bonanno crime family, adapted from Gay Talese's 1971 nonfiction book, and to unrelated novels; this article covers the Filipino film.2
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director and writers | Erik Matti, co-written with Michiko Yamamoto1 • 3 |
| Cast | John Lloyd Cruz (Edgar), Meryll Soriano (Kaye), Tirso Cruz III (the Bishop), Dan Fernandez, Perla Bautista1 • 4 |
| Premiere | World premiere at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival; opened the 2015 Cinema One Originals Film Festival1 • 5 |
| Runtime and language | Reported as 115 minutes by Film at Lincoln Center and 113 minutes by the Osaka Asian Film Festival; Tagalog and English6 • 4 |
| MMFF 2015 | Disqualified from Best Picture; Matti won Best Director and Tirso Cruz III Best Supporting Actor7 |
| Later honors | John Lloyd Cruz won Best Actor at the 2016 Gawad Urian Awards; the film counts 10 wins and 38 nominations overall7 |
| Anniversary release | Remastered 10th-anniversary re-release in Philippine theaters on September 17, 20258 |
Spoilers
Plot
Edgar and Kaye live comfortably on the proceeds of an investment scheme run through Kaye's opulent fundamentalist church, the fictional Church of Yeshua our Savior (COYS), which her father, Juancho Benavides, recruited them into. When the scheme collapses as a scam, friends and fellow parishioners whom Kaye had lured into the business demand their money back, and murderous big-time investors close in; the couple's daughter is kidnapped by creditors.1 • 6 • 9
Kaye turns to her church for help, but the Bishop offers only prayers. Edgar, who appears to be an obedient spouse content to stay in the background as his domineering wife takes charge, later rejoins the family from whom he has been estranged, a band of criminals known as the notorious Acetylene Gang of robbers, and the group plans a robbery of the church together.4 • 9 Film at Lincoln Center's program note describes the film as an immorality tale about a father who sheds the skin of civility he has dressed himself in, returning to the violent criminality of his former life.6
Production and sources
After the success of his 2013 hit-man thriller On the Job, Erik Matti turned down offers from Hollywood to shoot the film, and he and his team deliberately moved to the other end of the genre spectrum from that fast-paced action picture.6 • 5 Matti has said the story was based on three things: the aftermath of a pyramid scam, in which even the family members of the suspects are hunted down by the victims; the Acetylene Gang, a real group of robbing miners who dig their way into target buildings such as pawnshops; and some religious organizations.5
The film was set in the highlands of the Cordillera region, and reviews describe it as a quiet film noir drama situated in various parts of the Cordilleras, in contrast to the Metro Manila streets of On the Job.5 • 9 For John Lloyd Cruz, then the Philippines' most popular movie idol, it was his first Metro Manila Film Festival entry and his first venture as a co-producer; he said he would not have entered the festival with any other film.5 The film was rated R-13 and received an "A" rating from the Cinema Evaluation Board.5
Release and the MMFF disqualification
The film premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival in September, opened the Cinema One Originals Film Festival in November 2015, and screened as a MMFF 2015 entry that December.5 The Metro Manila Film Festival Executive Committee then disqualified it from the Best Picture category because the film had failed to disclose its participation as the opening film of the 2015 Cinema One Originals Film Festival. Producer Dondon Monteverde disputed the decision, saying the information had been disclosed beforehand, that the Cinema One premiere generated no revenue in compliance with the rules, and that the timing of the ruling, one day before the awards ceremony, warranted an investigation.7 Film at Lincoln Center notes that the disqualification led to hearings in Congress that exposed corruption at the heart of the festival itself.6
Despite the disqualification, Matti won Best Director and Tirso Cruz III won Best Supporting Actor at MMFF 2015.7 In 2016 the film received nominations at the FAP Awards, the Gawad Urian Awards, and the Star Awards for Movies, with Cruz winning the Gawad Urian Best Actor award and Cruz III winning the Star Award for Movie Supporting Actor of the Year; it also won Best Asian Film at the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival.7
Reception and legacy
Critics received the film as a companion piece to On the Job rather than a repeat of it. Cinema Scope's Michael Sicinski, a film critic, called it as accomplished as its predecessor and noted that it shares more of a formal kinship with popular Korean cinema than with most recent Filipino exports.3 On Rotten Tomatoes the 2015 film holds a Tomatometer of 91% from three reviews, and IMDb lists a 7.6/10 rating from about 720 users.3 • 10 Reviewers singled out Cruz's performance as a career best, a departure from his matinee-idol image into darker territory.6 • 3
The film's themes of pyramid schemes, extractive churches, and desperation have kept it in circulation. For its tenth anniversary, a remastered version returned to Philippine theaters on September 17, 2025, with Matti saying the re-release had been planned for about two years after the pandemic.8 Coverage of the re-release argued that the film's picture of financial swindle and institutional failure still spoke to conditions in the Philippines a decade later.8
Other works of the same title
The title has been used independently several times. A 1973 American television film directed by Paul Wendkos, starring Joseph Bologna, Brenda Vaccaro, and Raf Vallone, dramatized the Bonanno crime family after Joseph Bonanno's 1964 kidnapping; it was adapted from Gay Talese's 1971 work of literary journalism Honor Thy Father, which chronicles the rise and fall of the Bonanno family.2 • 11 Lesley Glaister's 1990 debut novel Honour Thy Father, a Gothic tale of four isolated sisters, won the Somerset Maugham Award and the Betty Trask Award.12
References
- Honor Thy Father, Reality MM Studios
- Honor Thy Father (1973), Rotten Tomatoes
- Honor Thy Father (2015), Rotten Tomatoes
- Honor Thy Father, Osaka Asian Film Festival 2016 program
- John Lloyd makes MMFF debut with 'Honor Thy Father', BusinessMirror (2015)
- Honor Thy Father, Film at Lincoln Center
- Honor Thy Father (2015) Awards, IMDb
- Why 'Honor Thy Father' feels eerily current a decade later, Philstar.com (2025)
- MMFF 2015 Review: John Lloyd Cruz shows sinister side in Honor Thy Father, PEP.ph
- Honor Thy Father (2015), IMDb
- Honor Thy Father by Gay Talese, Goodreads
- Honour Thy Father by Lesley Glaister, Goodreads
Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Crime, thriller, and mystery films (individual works) › 2015–2019 films › Crime drama and neo-noir films
Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026
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