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Sun Dogs (2006)
Stretching the Meaning of Documentary
When I first saw Sun Dogs on the list of movies available for review to Spout Mavens members, I skipped past it after reading only a few sentences. A movie about a Jamaican sled dog team? Cool Runnings gave me enough wacky Jamaican fish-out-of-water sports hijinks for one lifetime. Then I saw it was a documentary, and I put in a request. Then I started watching it and my interest waned. Then 10 minutes passed and I was hooked. Then I was bored. Then I was hooked again! It was a constant roller coaster of varying interest levels.
It's impossible to view Sun Dogs without thinking of Cool Runnings-the John Candy vehicle that had him training the first Jamaican bobsled team(based on a true story)- and in fact that's the intention of just about everyone involved in this film. The Jamaican sled dog idea was nothing more or less than a calculated ploy to bring money, tourism and attention to a country mired in widespread poverty and crime. This isn't an ignoble goal by any means; the main purpose of everyone involved is to show the world that Jamaicans are hardworking, strongwilled people, able to succeed at whatever they try. My problem, specifically in the beginning of the film, is that the documentary looks too much like a video postcard you might see on the travel channel, and I was worried that Sun Dogs would completely ignore the less attractive aspects of Jamaica. But, about 10-15 minutes in, the film begins to go down those more dangerous streets, and features a few talking head interviews that cover the crime rate in Kingston, the state of education, and the state of poverty. This seems to add a few new dimensions to the film, but in the end it isn't focused enough. The filmmakers try to cover so many topics, and then cram it into a few scant minutes during a documentary about sled dogs, that the documentary has no real depth.
For the most part the film follows the handful of people trying to pull together a sled dog team, train the dogs from scratch, and introduce this new sport in a country where most people don't even know what 'sledding' is. This is, literally, a ragtag team of dogs and people, which fits right in with the uplifting sports film these people are so desperate to make. All of the dogs are rescued from the J.S.P.C.A. and the filmmakers(and dogsled promoters) are eager to paint this as an allegory for Jamaica itself. These dogs are rescued from hard and brutal lives and given a shot to improve themselves and live happily ever after. And there lies my main complaint with this film; everyone is so eager to make this a brand, to market both the film and the country, that this documentary rarely feels real. I'm not saying that the events in this film never happened, or that it was all scripted, I'm just saying that for a documentary there's an awful lot of manipulation going on.
The previous documentary I reviewed here, Let The Church Say Amen, featured a group of people I would normally not enjoy spending time with, and despite the fact that I didn't enjoy spending time with the people in that film, I came away pleased with the movie overall. Mainly that was because every single thing in that film felt real, like the cameras just happened to capture these people and these events. In Sled Dogs it's obvious, painfully so, that some scenes and events have been staged because the filmmakers just needed the footage. A lot of these are minor, like characters meeting or having introductory conversations when it's clear they'd known each other previously.
It's hard for me to hate- or even dislike- this film, when the goal is so noble and the efforts of everyone involved are so heartfelt, but too much of this feels like a bad infomercial. Like the introductions of all the dogs where they do something wacky, the shot freezes as their name comes up and someone dubs in a cheesy 'woof woof' sound, to give them all personality. Something happens on the island near the end of the film that is a complete reversal of everything you would expect. The documentary seems eager to skip past this event, which I will not divulge here, but if anything more time should have been spent on it. It introduces the idea that perhaps the entire ills of a nation can't be solved by a winning sled dog team and a heart of gold attitude. It's also the one moment in the film that feels heartbreakingly real and unstaged. As it stands it's too little too late.
Dead End Run (2003)
Dead End Indeed
I was given this film as a gift, and since it was the Japanese release, I knew nothing about the title before viewing it. I assumed, from the cover, that it was a Japanese gangster film starring Tadanobu Asano, who I've enjoyed in every movie I've seen him in. The film gets credit for defying my expectations, but that's about ALL the credit I'll give it.
A collection of 3 short films all concerning people running into dead ends. Not figuratively, mind you, LITERALLY into dead ends. Like most Japanese anthologies I've seen, the shorts suffer from a lack of story. With no back story it's hard to really care about the proceedings. The film also suffers from a lack of purpose. In all but one of the shorts there is no explanation as to who, or what, the people are running from, so really you get hand-held camera work to the point of nausea, and little else.
The first film started boring me after the first 5 minutes of shots of the main character running(again, no indication as to why), and at 8 minutes I almost hit the fast forward button, but 30 seconds later he came to a stop in a dead end, where he crouched behind a corner. When he kills a woman who he thinks is sneaking up on him, we're subjected to over 3 minutes of him staring at the body, acting nervous. Here's where the film started to defy expectations(spoiler warning): The dead woman begins to rise and act like your typical Japanese ghost, and I prepared myself for a horror film. Then she started singing. And dancing. The music was actually quite good, and I enjoyed the next few minutes, but since this is a short film there really isn't enough time to expand upon whatever the filmmaker was trying to say. Still, it was odd and kind of fun, so I looked forward to the next segment.
I have to warn you, if this sounds interesting to you so far, that the second segment is one of the most obnoxious things I've seen in a film. Take the running from the first film, add another 2 minutes to the duration, and you'll start to get the idea of where this fails. The man runs, a lot, from some unseen pursuer, and eventually ends up in an alley that I think is the same from the first segment. Then he confronts the man chasing him, and they spend the next ten minutes of film standing motionless and speechless and pointing guns at each other. Exciting! Sogo Ishii(who HAS made some good films) seems to think that quick edits and shaky camera-work will add the kinetic tension needed to keep you interested, but it just didn't work for me. There's some weird hocus pocus where the actors playing the two characters change a couple of times inexplicably, and a twist ending that I suppose is supposed to add meaning to it all, but again we're given no reason for these 'events', so why care? To me it smacked of weirdness for weirdness sake, meant to seem deep and meaningful, but really just hot air.
The final segment, starring Asano, is the most competent of the three, and actually almost has a story. Asano is a criminal running from a trio of cops who finds himself trapped on a rooftop(a nice change of scenery). In a moment of desperation he takes hostage a young woman who turns out to be suicidal. This one ends too quickly, since it's the story that had the most potential to actually go somewhere, but it's pretty harmless, if not as interesting as the first segment.
I know some people have compared this to the films of David Lynch, but don't let that fool you into tracking it down. Where Lynch's long moments of inactivity and unexplained surrealism all work towards the emotional heart of the piece, here it just seems thrown together in an attempt to appeal to the MTV crowd(or whatever the equivalent in Japan is). It may be interesting, and heavily flawed, but at only 60 minutes long it's got an unnecessary 20 minutes or more of padding that easily could have been lost.
Dracula's Dog (1977)
Not bad enough?
*Please note the above score, as this movie is slightly below the middle of the road.*
Zoltan(named, I assume, after a Hungarian ruler in the 10th Century) isn't so much Dracula's hound as he is the hound of one of Dracula's servants, Veidt Schmidt. When the Russian army(I think their Russian, based on their uniforms, but no one has any kind of accent) unearths Dracula's tomb, they decide to burn all of the corpses, but not before some foolish soldier decides to pull the stake out of Zoltan's body, allowing him to regenerate and drain the blood of said soldier. He then helps his master, who decides to track down the last surviving heir of Dracula. At least, they call him the last heir in the movie, but he has two children, so wouldn't THEY be the last surviving heirs? There's a bit of a mythological problem here, as well. Veidt Schmidt is the vampire's servant, and not a full vampire. Yet he has immortality and can regenerate after death, all while walking in daylight and not needing blood. I don't know what Renfield's problem was, sitting in that asylum and eating flies.
At the beginning of the film Dracula is seen(in Zoltan's flashback!) is about to feast on a lovely young women in the 1800s. Zoltan interrupts his feeding, so Dracula transforms into a bat and instead feeds on Zoltan(why don't vampires do this more often, instead of courting danger by feeding on young, socially popular women?), who skips the whole 'dying' part of the process and goes straight to vampire dog. On their way out they drain and turn Veidt Schmidt(played by Reggie Nalder, whose wrinkles are more frightening than anything in this movie), who also skips the 'dying' part. I mention this because it's odd for them to have done that, as it's clearly established later that the victims DIE after being drained of blood.
The film quickly moves to southern California, where Michael Drake(the aforementioned Last Dracula) is taking his family on a two week camping trip in their RV. For plot motivation they also bring along their two dogs and a litter of puppies. Almost immediately weird things happen; Puppies disappear and the dogs are always howling at night. Of course, neither of those is odd, really, it seems to me a logical occurrence when you leave newborn puppies out in the wilderness all night, and howling is just something dogs do. But this bothers the family, who are worried and confused. Luckily for them, a Van Helsing-type character shows up in the form of Jose Ferrer to tell Michael all about his vampiric family tree and help him defeat the undead canines.
Really, the film isn't anything spectacularly atrocious, which is it's downfall. It's just middle of the road, never taking itself seriously enough to be campy, but also not self-aware enough to be tongue in cheek. There's no suspense to the film, since aside from the Russian soldier in the beginning there are NO human deaths, just a lot of animal cruelty. It's competently directed(by Albert Band, who would pass on the legacy of mediocre, competently bad horror movies to his son, Charles Band), with a clean print for the DVD. The dialog is notable for this type of film, due to it's believability. The characters may be boring and idiotic, but they speak in a natural manner(Michael's first thought after learning he's a Dracula is that he's going to get rich on royalties for all those movies). There is, however, a growing army of vampire doggies, and the oh-so-cute and cuddly widdle undead puppies.
Had it been a bit more over-the-top, just a little bit more awful, the movie would have been classic. As it was, I had fun and a few laughs, but just enough to feel justified in having seen it. I should note that it really takes a lot for me to hate bad horror movies. Even if the movie is awful and irredeemable, I usually feel the better for having seen it. I'll moderately recommend this, for people who REALLY love bad movies, but don't expect an MST3K level of fun.