Barking Dogs Never Bite Movie Download

10 / 10

an utterly charming and human black comedy on kidnapped dogs and wannabe professors
It takes a very careful but wildly imaginative mind to come up and film Barking Dogs Never Bite. It’s a mind that knows that a story isn’t important here, and shouldn’t be, which is a risk for any filmmaker, much less a first-timer like Bong Joon-Ho was. It’s loosely structured around two people, Yun-ju and Hyeon-nam, who live in an apartment complex and each deal with the rule of ‘no dogs’ in their own way. As do other tenants, like the boiler-room janitor, who finds the stray (or near-dead) dogs and makes them as part of soup. And, basically, Joon-Ho follows these two main souls, one a flaky accountant who loves to be outside, and another an aspiring professor who can’t stand the sound of dogs barking and decides to do ‘something’ about it, and fashions a very entertaining character study.

Moreover than being really great about its characters, of whom the filmmaker has the utmost concern and warmth over (much like in his film the Host, where the hilarity that comes from them and around them would appear to be quite genuine), it’s just brilliant visual storytelling. I loved seeing how he framed his character hiding in a closet in the boiler room as the janitor comes in and tells his buddy the story of the dead man buried behind two layers of concrete. I loved seeing that chase scene where our main heroine chases after the hero (or is it anti-hero) after he does something rather alarming with a small dog. And I just loved the mood of the piece, how he rolls in jazz music (Cowboy Bebop fan one might think or hope), and how on a dime an amusing moment could turn really serious, and then back to amusing again, sometimes in the same scene – the lonely old lady with the little dog and loads of untended radishes shows that quite clearly.

A lot of this could be too quirky and unlikely in other hands, and certainly it couldn’t be quite done like this in America (many in the audience gasped at some of the perilous moments with the dogs – most comparable, though still lighter, than Amores Perros). But the filmmaker, already running out of the gate on his first try, sticks with the darker modes of his tale and makes us care about these people, even when they’re imperfect or just plain stupid or cruel, and their own ways of redemption or feeling important to themselves is what counts. It’s a comic powerhouse and a serious debut, light and dark, full of vigor and little moments that are quiet enough for us to see these people, like the pre-professor and his pregnant wife with a few sad truths hidden beneath her, and that girl’s unyielding heart. It’s like the ideal date-movie introduction to Asian cinema for Wes Anderson fans.Read More