Review for Pou-Soi Cheang's 'Dog Bite Dog' (aka 'Gau Ngao Gau'), 2006.

If Pou-Soi Cheang has any say in the matter, bleak is the new black...

Sometimes, every now and again, a film comes along and you have to wonder (well, I am) about what the circumstances are behind how it came to get made, why in this way, is it a viable proposition, and all those other questions about its origins. Why here then? Well, far from being bleak, something that's not out of the ordinary in the history of film (but something uncommon in contemporary Hollywood) this film is simply so amazingly dark, desperately downbeat (though not without success for the most part) that it just looks thoroughly odd.

How does this work then? Well, the look of the film is heavily shadowed and washed-out, the action sometimes almost entirely obscured but perfectly visible (it's right on the edge of too dark perhaps), the music is ambient, feedback-based, electric static, not entirely defined, or the music gets briefly bass-heavy and euphoric or ethereal (beautiful music, soundtrack - I absolutely love the dog barking, it was key to how well the mood lifting completely to another level, though I can see many thinking it's an obvious trick), and the story is from such a dark place that's it's tangible and realistic yet entirely out of most people's direct experience.

Now, although this film does have some elements of it that hark back to the golden age of good old Category III movies, the mid-90's salacious mixes of sex and violence aren't here, but the mood will feel most like that you might expect to experience in watching one of those films. This isn't an action movie per se, though it's about fighting and physical violence, crime, it's more of a dark tale that has brief moments that are astonishingly brutal and inhuman. It's completely uncommercial on the surface (the film apparently struggled at the cinema in HK), though touches of familiarity and a little melodrama (probably the largest faults in the film) persuade me that it's not entirely implausible that this film is an example of HK and what it can do that other countries simply can't touch or dare not go near. Desperately dark, massively nasty, very dynamic and unusual in it's structure (drifting, dream-like, yet it makes sense) and very atmospheric almost from start to end.

Premise is relatively simple at heart, Pang (Edison Chen) is an animalistic born-and-bred fighter hired as a killer. The resulting chase, involving Wai (Sam Lee) as the wayward (and similarly dog-like) cop who takes it on his shoulders to deal with this wandering killer, is the central part of the story. Both turn in superbly solid performances in this more mature and substantial film. Surrounding this, a little familiar 'good cop, bad cop' action, internal affairs, parental relationships that are shattered, love stories, but generally all is very much focused on the brawling dogs as they fight against each other. Pang himself does go from convincingly incapable of human interaction to suddenly appearing able to drive and talk, and this is just one example of the kind of cracks that show-up in the logic of the film, the mood also broken with a little sentimentality and melodrama on occasion, but primarily the key fault is when the drifting ends and the attempts and tying up the loose ends and making sense (in a more traditional fashion) begins to happen.

Ultimately, the film worked incredibly well for me, I am absolutely convinced Cheang has stumbled upon a style that is both graspable and ground-breaking, familiar yet unusual and individual - similar to how 'S.P.L' worked, it's in a balance of elements that either clicks with the viewer or doesn't, because it's in the subtleties of difference that the best parts of the film sit, and it's from a familiar well-trodden background that they spring out. If this isn't already it, I would say he has a series of mini classics within him - lovely Direction, and truly superb, inspired use of sound, music and visuals. A very memorable, beautifully dark film. The 2-Disc HK DVD has had the previously apparent problem with the transfer of the feature resolved, the film looks lovely and the subtitles are near-perfect - I have to go back and watch the extras though, I'm fascinated to find out what everyone has to say which might shed some light on the circumstances behind this film.

Dog Bite Dog Teaser (YouTube).
Dog Bite Dog Trailer (YouTube).
rder the DVD at YesAsia.
Twitch Post : Website and Poster.
Twitch Post : Picked up for International Sales.