This is a man and dog versus the rest drama — with a deadpan sense of humour

Animal wranglers deserve special mention in this film – they had to handle not only the star, but about 200 canine extras.

Vietnamese actor Eddie Peng with Xin.

What’s your favourite movie scene involving a dog? Mine is in the 1981 George Miller road trip film Mad Max 2. Mel Gibson eats a can of Dinki-Di dog food (meat and vegies flavour), tosses the container on the ground, and his cattle dog snaps and growls at the lean, hungry, hovering Bruce Spence, making it clear he must wait for third lick of the tin.

The Chinese drama Black Dog, which blends western, gangster, homecoming and social upheaval themes, has an action movie moment in which the star, an unnamed whippet mix (canine actor Xin), crashes through a window, shattering the glass, to help the human he has befriended.

Director and co-writer Guan Hu has not relied on computer-generated images, unlike the laughable 2020 remake of Call of the Wild starring Harrison Ford and a CGI dog, so Xin, a real dog, does the stunt. Only the glass was added post-production.

Indeed, the animal wranglers deserve special mention. They had to handle not only the star but about 200 canine extras. In the opening scene a huge pack of desert-dwelling dogs charges on to a road and causes a bus to overturn. It’s spectacular to watch. Credit, too, to cinematographer Gao Weizhe.

The setting is a town in northwest China on the edge of the Gobi Desert. It is 2008 and the Chinese authorities are in full swing for the Beijing Summer Olympics, preparing to show the world the new face of China. Lang (Vietnamese actor Eddie Peng in a departure from his romcom roles) was on that bus, heading back home after spending a decade in prison for manslaughter. He is 38 and has a name in the town for his pre-prison life as a circus motorcycle stuntman. He is the strong, silent type. I didn’t count them but I suspect Xin has more lines than Peng.

The local gangster, Butcher Hu (Chinese director Jia Zhangke), who also trades in snakes for their skin, meat and medicinal uses, is after Lang as it was his nephew who died at his hands. “Your days are numbered,” one of his henchmen tells Lang.

Part of the Olympics clean-up includes rounding up the stray dogs. The local authorities are after one hound in particular, a “thin black dog believed to have rabies”. There is a reward for his capture. Lang, needing money, joins the ramshackle dog patrol. The first time he meets the thin black dog it’s similar to what happens to Spence in Max Max 2. However, over time they bond. They are two loners, neither of whom has been a good boy. They, like China itself, are seeking to reinvent.

Another part of the Olympic tidying involves the town itself. Its buildings are demolished and their residents moved on. This town and its people are being abandoned in the name of 21st-century progress. This abandonment is represented in the dismal zoo run by Lang’s alcoholic father. The animals, including a tiger, languish in their own jails made of concrete and steel.

The cinematographer captures the surprising similarity between the arid, wild desert and the decaying, dusty town. He uses widescreen shots with great effect. A scene involving the zoo animals near the end is brilliant.

This is a man and dog versus the rest drama with a social conscience and a deadpan sense of humour. It’s a edgy film for the director, who is best known for blockbusters such as the war drama The Eight Hundred (2020).

It won the Un Certain Regard section – for unconventional movies – at the 2024 Cannes film festival. It did not win Cannes’ Palm Dog Award for the best performance by a canine – that went to Kodi, the griffon mix star of the Swiss-French comedy Dog on Trial – but in a nice touch, when filming wrapped Peng adopted his canine co-star.

Black Dog (M)

In Mandarin with English subtitles
116 minutes
In cinemas

★★★