Director – Guan Hu – 2023 – China – Cert. 12a – 106m
***1/2
An ex-con returns to his home town, which is infested with wild dogs, and befriends a stray – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, August 30th
Looking down from the edge of a slope towards Gobi Desert scrubland. In the distance, a coach moving along a road. Suddenly, a large pack of wild dogs come out of nowhere and charge down the slope. The startled bus topples over. The dogs are gone, the driver is getting everyone out of the bus. A man complains that his money, his life savings, have gone. He needs that money. Who has taken it? They are about ten miles from Chixia. One of those on the bus is Lang’s son. The police are called, they arrive and help get the bus back upright. Lang Yonghui (Eddie Peng), as required, shows an officer his parole ID. Lang walks behind the slow moving bus as the police escort the coach to Chixia.
As an announcement warns of a black dog seen around the town that may well be carrying rabies, Lang is strip searched at the station while the other passengers wait to be interviewed. He leaves, eats at a noodle bar, where people gossip about him being the best motorcyclist in the circus troupe. Old Qi died yesterday, and the restaurant owner invites Lang to tomorrow’s funeral. With the Beijing Olympics coming up, the radio mentions a forthcoming eclipse, dubbed the Olympic Eclipse. Lang is just taking a pee at the corner of a deserted building when the black dog turns up. He runs round a corner and grabs a piece of wood to defend himself, but it simply goes and pees in the same spot.
He goes to his dad’s old place, scheduled for demolition, and gets the key off the elderly neighbour. He removes dust covers, finds his motorbike. His room has a poster of the face from Pink Floyd: The Wall. A couple of bricks come through a skylight, courtesy of bikers from the Hu family, who warn he’ll pay for his crime. He goes to the zoo where his alcoholic father now lives, according to the neighbour. A cop drives him around, showing him various buildings due for demolition. The place is dilapidated. He was in a successful band.
Spurred on by the Y1 000 reward money, he watches out for the dog, spots it, gives chase, and gets his backside bitten for his pains. Later, he learns that the local cop has put him onto the new dog catching team, and that Butcher Hu is looking for him. Skiving in the kitchen during a briefing session, he meets and hits it off with Hu Wanli (Zhang Yi), another ex-con, who tells him to stick with Mr. Yao (Jia Zhangke). But, as it turns out, Lang is more inclined to let dogs go than catch them. When put on transport detail, he is just as likely to let people keep beloved pets as he is to confiscate them, as he is supposed to do.
When the team catch the black dog, Lang transports it into the desert and then, when his truck overturns, lets it out of its cage to sleep with him in his overturned cab. After it bites him, he’s found by a travelling circus, where a woman (Tong Lia) coaxes the dog to take a drink. Later, he lets it into his building during a hailstorm. It further takes to him when he washes it. Hu Wanli warns him that not turning the dog in could get Lang into trouble. Lang goes to Mr. Yao, and while some of his colleagues think Lang out of order, Yao notices how badly Lang will fight for the dog and declares that he can keep it, as long as he gets it registered.
Lang visits his dad at the zoo, who is feeding a Manchurian Tiger. He is taken to the scene of the death of Butcher Hu’s nephew and is threatened with going over the edge of the same cliff. Returning home, he finds Butcher Hu has beaten up his elderly neighbour and visits Butcher Hu’s office to ask, who hurt Mr. Camel? The black dog, waiting faithfully outside, joins in the ensuing fight. Later, Lang visits his dad in the hospital who makes him promise to look out for the tiger, feeding it and setting it free in the desert if necessary. Lang’s sister phones; she’s struggling to raise a family of three.
The Woman, 34, tries to talk him into joining the circus. She is with the same man in the circus, but he won’t commit, and she’s dissatisfied. Lang gets captured by Butcher Hu, then escapes during an earthquake. But now his dog is missing. He rescues a man from a room of snakes at Butcher Hu’s snake farm premises. He visits the bank to withdraw the sizeable amount of money in the account set up for him by his father. He falls off a low bridge trying out a bike stunt to the strains of Hey You from Pink Floyd: The Wall. He tracks down his dog in a cage at the zoo… The animal is sick.
He bikes the dog out to the desert. They come across the band of wild dogs. The black dog perks up at this. He wheels dog and sidecar through them. Back at Lang’s, the black dog is joined by a pregnant bitch. Mr. Camel’s dog takes Lang to show him Mr. Camel has died. The black dog is dying; Lang buries in the desert. Before long, locals gather in the same desert area to view the eclipse to the strains of Mother from Pink Floyd: The Wall. Through a window, Lang and Hu Wanli watch the bitch caring for her newborn puppies. The circus woman leaves on the tour bus, Lang cares for his ailing father in hospital as, outside, crowds watch the countdown for the Beijing Olympics. He rides out into the desert, fails another bike stunt, and rides off optimistically, one of the black dog’s puppies in his rucksack.
Dedicated to All Those Who Have Hit The Road Again, this meanders: the story of a drifter befriended by an equally rootless dog. He’s supposed to have been a big rock star in the past, but the best the film can manage is a couple of tracks from Pink Floyd: The Wall on its soundtrack, when perhaps some more original music suggesting the character’s own past would have been more appropriate. (Another recent Chinese film, Only the River Flows, (Wei Shujun, 2023), similarly plundered bits of the soundtrack of Crash, David Cronenberg, 1996.) The relationship between the man and the dog is nicely handled, but the plethora of subplots never really coalesces into anything, and the whole thing feels distinctly half-baked.
It has a nice feel for location, though; the fading desert town where it all takes place, despite hollow promises of the betterment of people’s lives as the authorities prepare to demolish large swathes of the place, will stay with you. Otherwise, this is average art house fare which promises something special but then doesn’t really deliver.
Black Dog is out in cinemas in the UK and Ireland on Friday, August 30th.
Trailer: