Dog Bite Dog

October 25, 2007

Rated: NR Runtime: 108 min Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Pardon the hyperbole, but I have to say that watching ‘Hong Kong Action Movies’ is a lot like climbing Mount Everest. Sometimes you’re rewarded with an exceptionally special sight. Other times all you get is frustrated and depressed. But either way, you’re always completely spent and in need of a long recovery. And most times you have at least one moment where you wish you could slit your wrists.

Dog Bite Dog is certainly no exception to the above. Director Soi Cheang has created a tale of a savage assassin who sneaks into Hong Kong from Cambodia to assassinate the wife of a local judge. In his attempted getaway, the cops react quickly and arrest him…but not until after he turns one police officer’s neck into a shish-ke-bob. On the way to police precinct, he manages to escape his handcuffs and cause a wreck, allowing him to escape. One of the cops, a true renegade name Wai, embarks on a violent quest to exact revenge for the deaths of his comrades.

The assassin is more than a bit unusual. He dresses in tattered clothes, he is illiterate and can barely speak, and he apparently doesn’t get many good meals. He’s less like an assassin and more like a homeless psycho you’d see sleeping under a bridge. Additionally, he’s a complete homicidal animal. We later find out that he was enslaved as a child and made to fight deadly gladiator matches and, now that he has survived to adulthood, he’s farmed out as a killer to whoever needs some dirty work done cheap.

The cop, on the other hand, while being unorthodox and insubordinate, is gifted and his fellow cops have high hopes about his career. He has daddy issues, however, and is under investigation by Internal Affairs. His captain is also about 3 seconds away from firing him at any given moment.

This is where someone got an idea that, for SOME insane reason, they thought was completely original: during the pursuit, lets show how civilized men can be turned into animals, and vice-versa. Oh, yeah, THAT’S never been done before.

With a very heavy hand, the “lesson” is orchestrated on screen with sluggish precision and copious amounts of blood and brutality. In one particular scene that almost made me laugh out loud, the sounds of growling animals were dubbed in over the actor’s own noises! Come on! Haven’t they heard of subtlety in the far east?!?

Over time, the savage assassin becomes a lot tamer after he meets a woman. She apparently took all the steam right out of him…but I digress. At the same time, however, the cops get more and more desperate to find their man and begin doing things to their informants and other innocent people that would make Al Quaeda operatives flinch. Yeah, yeah, we get the point…can we PLEASE get on with the story?!?

Complaints aside, however, the action scenes are choreographed extremely well and most of the movie flows along rather nicely. I have to admit that I find myself *wanting* to like it more than I do. But the truth is that it simply isn’t a great movie. With the aforementioned flaws, it’s only just “pretty good”.

Posted by Alex | Filed Under 3 Stars, Action, DVD, Edison Chen, Lam Suet, NR, Sam Lee