Hachi: A Dog's Tale

Title: Hachi: A Dog's Tale
Rating: 2.5/5
Genre: Drama
Starring: Richard Gere
Director: Lasse Hallström

Since I first heard about this film being made, I knew that sooner or later I would end up watching it, the simple story one I found touching before the Hollywood recreation. About a dog found at the Shibuya train station in Japan during the 1920s, (though expectedly this was changed to somewhere in the modern day US, because naturally American audiences can't fathom something occurring outside their own country) he was taken in by a music professor who took pity on the lonely puppy. As the dog grew older he began walking its master to work and waiting faithfully for his return, until one fateful day the professor died from a heart attack. Hachi, the dog, still waited faithfully for its master outside the Shibuya station for almost a decade, pining for its master and surviving from food given to it by passers by who had long since come to recognise to the unofficial station mascot, and even now the statue of Hachi overlooks the station awaiting his masters return.

One of the main things that intrigued me was just exactly what were they to write about? Surely there isn't an awful lot of detail to the tale and so they would be left with the decision to either fabricate an extended plotline – which to some extent they did in the rest of the backing cast – or utilise ridiculously long scenes to really push their point across. It is the latter that really takes precedence; for half an hour the film dwells on a Hachi sitting outside the station. Occasionally someone would feed him, or a passer by would say hello, minor events might occur such as the professors daughter taking him home only to have him escape again five minutes later. The hour preceding that wasn't all that different, except we see Gere cuddling the dog through various stages of its life. The answer to my question of what they were to do about this inherently short story is quite frankly “nothing,” leaving this 90 minute film feeling arduously drawn out with only my inherent adoration for all things fluffy maintaining my interest.

The very notion that such a film should be ranked so highly by anybody (at the time of writing, this film looks set to clock into the imdb top 250, once more proving the moronic nature of many of its inhabitants) is quite frankly ludicrous. Richard Gere was Richard Gere. He was the same character here as he was in every single other film he's done. I don't even think he acts anymore; he's an on screen personality people have come to know and every time he stars in a film we already know precisely what his character is like, and yet he impressively still forms a stronger on-screen relationship with the dog than with his wife or children, whom fortunately appear to have most of their screen time removed once someone in post-production realised none of them could act. The strength of emotion; the impact upon the viewer comes from the story itself, and has very little to do with the very cliché manner it was created. Dog lovers may weep but the rest will sleep.