Dog Bite Dog

Year:2006
Director:Soi Cheang Pou-Soi
Cast:Edison Chen, Sam Lee Chan-Sam, Pei Pei, Lai Yiu-Cheung, Eddie Cheung Siu-Fai, Lam Suet, Lam Ka-Wah, Lee Ka-Wing, Chow Ka-Sing
Description:
Edison
Chen extends his famously limited range with Dog
Bite Dog, an anticipated crime thriller that's
harrowing, punishing, and unforgiving to both its
characters and the audience. Chen stars as a Cambodian
hitman let loose in Hong Kong, where he proceeds to
snuff his mark and just about everyone else who crosses
his path. We're first introduced to him on the boat
over, where he's locked in the hold like some sort
of illegally-transported feral animal. When his meal
of rice porridge is spilled into his dwelling, he
devours the spilled food like the eponymous dog of
the title. The way Chen is portrayed in these sequences,
it's like he's some uncontrollable beast who'll literally
bite the hand that feeds him. He's dirty, scruffy,
and practically monosyllabic, plus he'd probably eviscerate
you with his teeth if you made fun of his rapping.
And while he may be a figurative canine, he doesn't
actually call anyone "dog". Clearly, this
is the greatest Edison Chen film ever.
Opposing the assassin
is Wai ,
a young detective with a decidedly disagreeable attitude.
Wai clashes with his superior officer over his sullen and insubordinate attitude,
before beginning his pursuit of the assassin - who
we'll call Ed, simply for discussion's sake. After
checking out the crime scene, Wai runs into Ed, who
leads him into a local dai pai dong and proceeds to demonstrate his killer
instinct by offing a pile of people. The display of
casual brutality incenses Wai, and once Ed is on the
loose, Wai begins to become unhinged in his pursuit.
Leaving the rest of the cops far behind, Wai sinks even lower in
his obsessive chase, brutalizing informants, bartering
information for drugs, and basically acting like a
world class lout. After a while, the question must
be asked: who's worse, the killer or the cop?
Probably the killer,
though the filmmakers blur the line so forcibly that
they practically leave chafe marks on the celluloid.
Dog Bite Dog is thematically solid, and proffers
a worldview that's so pessimistic and depressing that
it might cause emotional scarring. Unlike many celebrated
Hong Kong crime thrillers, where there's "heroism"
between the bullet holes and head trauma, Dog Bite
Dog is full of ugly, morally bankrupt people who
listen to their conscience only when it's too late - or perhaps never at all. Ed leaves a truckload
of bodies in his wake, never bothering to hesitate
when pulling the trigger or plunging in the knife.
At least he's humanized in his two relationships,
1) with his Cambodian "father", who raised
him via brutal bare-fisted death matches, and 2) with
an illegal Mainland immigrant ,
who's sexually abused and lives on a putrid landfill.
Ed rescues her from her sordid lifestyle and agrees
to bring her with him back to Cambodia after she demonstrates
pure-hearted devotion to her ultraviolent savior.
She'll even turn on the cops who oppose Ed, and will
risk life, limb, and possible gangrene to be with
him. If it weren't so sick, it might almost be sweet.
But hey, that's the
world of Dog Bite Dog, where everything just
sucks. Director Cheang Pou-Soi seems to have found
his calling with depressing thrillers that make modern
life seem like reason enough to put a bullet in your
brain. His last film, Home Sweet Home, featured
a revenge-seeking squatter who terrorized a housing
estate because it was built on the remains of her
dead family. In that film, signing the wrong rental
agreement could lead to unexpected terror and the
loss of both husband and child - and it's all because
society is cruel, unfeeling, and plays no favorites
when it chooses to victimize you. In Dog Bite Dog,
everyone is the victim and they all strike back by
becoming perpetrators. Even the righteous cops aren't
so hot; some hold damning secrets, and others will
eventually resort to questionable methods because,
dammit, they're pissed off. Dog Bite Dog is
an unforgiving portrait of life as Hell, where justice
is nonexistent and even the sympathetic characters
start to act like monsters. Basically, this is the
most unhappy time you'll have at the movies this year.
For the viewer, however,
unhappy isn't necessarily bad. Dog Bite Dog
is so dark and unforgiving that it's bound to find
fans. Brutality is only the tip of the iceberg for
Dog Bite Dog, which earns its Category III
rating thanks to copious violence and an intensity
that can only be called unrelenting. Cheang Pou-Soi
stages things with stark cinematic flair, going for
moments of hair-raising stillness before laying into
the audience full force with a gunshot, clubbing,
or sudden smackdown. Dog Bite Dog is a movie
where characters off each other at the drop of a hat,
and Cheang creates admirable atmosphere. This is an
ugly/gorgeous film that creates beauty out of disgusting
images, e.g. Edison Chen gorging himself on dimsum
before offing someone, or a violent throwdown in a
garbage-strewn landfill. The sound guys earn their
keep here; aside from the feral sounds permeating
certain scenes, the violence is almost always punctuated
by eardrum-shattering sound. If nothing else, this
is a film that will keep you awake.
However, Dog Bite Dog
is also a film that could prove repugnant to some.
The film's depiction of humanity is so unrelentingly
pessimistic that some people may end up classifying
it as completely without redeeming value. Honestly,
those people may be right. Dog Bite Dog's darkness
will undoubtedly be appealing to many cinema cultists
because it's the type of movie that simply screams,
"Not for the whole family!" It's everything
Walt Disney wants no part of, and that anti-fuzzy
attitude earns automatic cred with people who treat
Category III as a brand name, and not just a rating.
Honestly, those people are right too. Dog Bite
Dog earns its blood-spattered wings readily, and
delivers a hardcore thrill ride that's most definitely
felt. That feeling may be akin to a rat chewing its
way out of your stomach, but it's definitely there.
If that sounds unappealing to you, then maybe a repeat
viewing of Nine Girls and a Ghost is just your
thing.
Still, Cheang and company
go too far with their ending, which takes "over
the top" and ditches if for "too much".
For a majority of the film's running time, the dog-eat-dog
themes are presented full-force like some sort of
unhappy sociology course, but at the end we get a
final "circle of life" natural history lesson
that takes the film's consistent darkness and trades
it in for something we might watch on The Discovery
Channel. It's further than Cheang Pou-Soi had to go;
sometimes meaning can occur without going that extra
step, but Cheang covers a few football fields with
the film's climax. Some advice to Cheang Pou-Soi,
Wong Ching-Po, the Pang Brothers, and other filmmakers
determined to have the last word: sometimes less can
be more.
But what about the elephant
in the room? We're talking about the million dollar
question on the lips of the people who hated Gen-Y
Cops and the people who loved it, too. If you're
asking, "How was Edison Chen?", then the
answer is: not bad at all. He may be upstaged by Sam
Lee and Lam Ka-Wah , but Edison Chen
turns in range-busting work in Dog Bite Dog.
He's convincingly psychotic, and attacks the role
admirably. Seeing one of Hong Kong Cinema's most infamous
prettyboys get nasty is probably reason enough to
check out Dog Bite Dog. Chen's work isn't
compensation for Gen-Y Cops, but at the very
least it's a solid downpayment. Overall, Dog Bite
Dog is the perfect poison pill for Hello Kitty
haters, and delivers a harrowing ride of violence,
brutality, and full force thematic excess. It's all
a bit much, but the film's starving genre-specific
audience will undoubtedly be tickled pink, if not
a dark crimson red. As the saying goes, you know who
you are.