Rhandy Torres stars as Master Chief Tabalon in "The Master Chief: Part One." (Albea Embestro Soriano)
Born into a military family, writer-director Chris Soriano took inspiration from his father and other Filipinos in the Navy for his latest film, “The Master Chief: Part One.”
The 135-minute action drama began streaming Tuesday on Amazon Prime and Apple TV and tells the Navy story through the lens of the “Filipino mafia.”
Soriano also stars in the film as Gabe Rosario, a Filipino who joins the Navy to seek a brighter future but is met with racial tensions and other challenges. These include a villain inspired by Leonard Francis, the figure known as “Fat Leonard” behind a decades-long Navy contracting scandal.
Soriano, born at Naval Medical Center San Diego to Filipino parents, plays a character who manages supplies on a ship, he told Stars and Stripes on a Zoom call Friday. Soriano’s 20-year Navy veteran father, Gerardo Soriano, did the same job as a ship’s storekeeper.
“My dad would tell me a lot of stories when I was younger about Filipinos in the Navy,” he said. “Whenever I’d hang out with him and his buddies, I’d always hear people say the words ‘Filipino mafia’ as a joke.”
Writer-director-actor Chris Soriano stars as Gabe Rosario in the film “The Master Chief: Part One.” (Albea Embestro Soriano)
“The Master Chief: Part One” ells the U.S. Navy story through the lens of the “Filipino mafia.” (Albea Embestro Soriano)
It wasn’t until Soriano became a filmmaker and was looking for a story to tell that he thought about revisiting the subject.
“I dove into it and interviewed sailors and I asked them about their stories,” he said. “There were a lot of the jokes about secret funny meetings where food is exchanged, and it isn’t really nefarious like the mafia mafia.”
His film does include a nod to “Goodfellas,” a film by Martin Scorsese about the infamous organized crime families. Scorsese is an influence on Soriano, who employs narration throughout his film.
Gabe and many of the main characters are enlisted sailors because Soriano wanted to show that side of the Navy.
“Movies like ‘Top Gun’ show the officer’s side in the military,” he said. “We don’t really hear too many enlisted stories. And what I’ve heard is that ‘chiefs run the Navy’; if this is a big thing, why has it not been showcased?”
Soriano said he was surprised to find that Filipinos have risen in the ranks, even to command master chief, the senior enlisted sailors who report directly to their commanders. The film’s end features a memorial to retired Command Master Chief Leopoldo Albea, a native Filipino who died in 2020.
“I used to think that to be at the highest you got to have a degree, where you have to bribe somebody or you got to do something to get there,” Soriano said. “But there are great people out there that just did it through hard work, and being a genuine good person.”
Soriano’s company, Albea Embestro Soriano, filmed in San Diego and on the USS Iowa, a retired battleship that’s now a museum near Long Beach, Calif. The company purchased Navy uniforms at a surplus store.
“I remember people were like, ‘What are you doing with 50 coveralls?’” Soriano said. “I was, like, ‘We’ll donate them back; we need this, we’re working on a production.’ They were so nice and said, ‘OK, you want boots; you need belts?’ So it really worked out.”
The film won the Jury Award for best drama feature on Nov. 18 at San Diego Film Week, which celebrates the local film industry.
Production for part two of “Master Chief” starts in the next 90 days, Soriano said. He hopes to release the film on Nov. 11, Veterans Day.
