Batang Quiapo

Batang Quiapo is a 1986 Filipino action-comedy film directed by Pablo Santiago and starring Fernando Poe Jr. and Maricel Soriano. The film is the first and only collaboration between Poe and Soriano, and was Poe's first film under Regal Films. The film broke box-office records of its time. Plot Maria and Tikboy are two friends in Quiapo, Manila who have made pickpocketing their means of living. They attempt to steal from Baldo, a former pickpocket who was just released from a prison in Muntinlupa after six years, only to be outsmarted by him. Baldo goes to his friend Iska, the owner of a small restaurant where Maria and Tikboy are regular customers, and is informed that she fabricated a story of Baldo being an overseas Filipino worker who just returned from Saudi Arabia so that his time in prison is hidden from others. Maria and Tikboy arrive at Iska's restaurant, only to see Baldo eating at a table, upon which he returns the wallets he took from them. Baldo meets up with mechanic Momoy David, an old friend of his, to ask for help in finding a job, leading to his employment as a charcutier at Mila's Special Lechon. Maria soon becomes friends with Baldo, joining him on a mission to help Mang Miniong, a friend of hers, retrieve fifty thousand pesos he paid to counterfeiters and swap it with the fake gold bar they sold to him. Maria's boisterous antics nearly disrupt the mission for Baldo, but they eventually succeed. Baldo soon admits to Maria his past as a convict, and tries to convince her to leave pickpocketing for good, to which she agrees. However, Maria sees Baldo continuously meet up with a woman, to which she becomes jealous. Maria vents out her resentment by having drinking sessions and getting a job as an entertainer at a club, with Baldo getting irate for her doing the latter. Though Baldo begins confronting Maria about her feelings, their conversation is interrupted by Maj. Corrales, the head of police, who asks for his help in taking down a drug syndicate led by Kits that have made orphans Dodong and Caloy unwitting mules for illegal drugs. On a day when Dodong and Caloy are delivering a bird cage discreetly filled with drugs to Kits, Baldo intercepts them and removes the drugs from the cage before they send it to the syndicate.