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Barking Dogs Never Bite-Movie Review

There was a time when I used to watch a lot of movies, but there were specific genres that did not interest me enough. “Science Fiction” was one such genre. Don’t get me wrong; I loved the first two Terminator movies (directed by James Cameron), “Edge of Tomorrow”, “Children of Men” and the like. In that list, there is another movie called “Snowpiercer” directed by Bong-Joon-Ho; based on a graphic novel by the name of “Le Transperceneige ”.

The next movie I saw of Bong-Joon-Ho was the Academy Award-winning “Parasite”, a Dark Comedy thriller that I liked. So I made up my mind to watch all of his previous works and I chose to watch “Barking Dogs Never Bite” first.

Released in the Year 2000, also Bong-Joon-Ho’s directorial debut, it is a dark comedy/thriller movie that has a runtime of 1 Hour 50 Minutes and works well for the most part. It features an aspiring professor who is not working and is in a strained relationship with his wife. He is also irritated by a barking dog in his apartment building and takes an extreme step to stop that distraction. While watching this movie I could see a lot of parallels between this and “Parasite”. Although many would argue that the latter is more polished and coherent, I am not going to contest that.

People have criticized this movie as it feels amateurish at times. Well, for a movie that is made on a shoestring budget, a director on debut, and that it was mainly aimed at Korean audiences (it’s DVD only released 10 years later) it is pretty good. Mostly what this movie could have improved on is a bit of character development at the start and a more riveting final act.

On the whole, I would say if you are an animal-lover, a couple of scenes could make you cringe [at the start of the movie they do say “NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE MAKING OF THIS FILM”]  but there is nothing very graphic, it is mostly suggestive while portraying it. I would recommend this movie to anyone who likes foreign cinema, dark comedy/thriller genres. But if you do plan on watching this please SKIP the trailer on YouTube as it gives away most of the story.


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