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When the Kerberos Panzer Cops, a highly armed and armored special riot
police unit, were disbanded, a handful of cops refused to lay down their
weapons, and they were thus outlawed, hunted down and jailed. But some,
like Koichi (Shigeru Chiba), a commander of the unit, managed to get away. Inui
(Yoshikazu Fujiki), a former Kerberos Panzer Cop who was released from
prison rather quickly, is hired by Hayasa (Takashi Matsuyama), a
mysterious man in white, to track down Koichi, whom he describes like a
stray dog that has to be taken care of. But actually, he sees Inui as the
stray dog who feels an urgent need to return to his master, even if the
master has abandoned him. Inui is quick to make contact with Tang Mie
(Eaching Sue), Koichi's girlfriend in Taiwan, and after a journey that
takes the two of them through half the country, they find Koichi, who has
become a rice farmer. He invites the two of them to stay with him, which
Tang Mie does out of affection, Inui because he sees Koichi as his master,
and he himself is merely the dog who has returned to him. After weeks of
working in the fields for meagre wages, Hayasa shows up and asks Inui to
lure Koichi into a trap, and he is trying to replace Koichi as Inui's
master. Inui, always loyal, steals Koichi's battle gear from the Kerberos
Panzer Cop-days though and takes out Hayasa's entire army of hitmen, but
not without losing his own life. At the ending, Koichi packs his battle
gear and heads back to Japan to have some revenge. Before Stray
Dog, director Mamoru Oshii has mainly but not exclusively been known
as a anime director and manga writer (he has also created the multi-media Kerberos
Saga this film is a part of), and the influences show: In many
shots, the camera remains static while the characters are only allowed
minimal movement, as if they were recreating comicbook panels, several
aspects of the story are intentionally exaggerated just like one would do
in a comicbook or anime, the film's rhythm changes dramatically even in
action scenes, which is almost a trademark of the anime as such, and many
grotesque details seem oddly out of place in a live-action-movie. In Stray
Dog, this all falls together to a fascinating piece of film that's
entertainingly unlike anything you've ever seen, and that's only
emphasized on by action sequences that are shot in a totally unlikely way,
often leaving the main action out of the picture in favour of some weird
details, and the characters constantly posing instead of really getting
into the scene. So this film is fascinating, yes ... but is it a great
movie? Unfortunately, no. Sure, for the most part, Stray Dog is
unlike anything you've ever seen, but at the same time, it drags on a
little bit too long, it suffers from its intentionally slow pacing, tries
too hard to make its point. That's not to say Stray Dog is a bad
movie though, far from it, but it'snot a masterpiece, more of a diamond in
the rough.
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