You can order the DVD of this movie from Amazon for $17.99, but that price does not include the packet of Kleenex that you will inevitably use up watching it. This is the story of an adorable dog named Hachi from his birthplace in Odate, Japan, whose loyalty to his human companion is so endearing that you’ll have insight into that automobile bumper sticker that announces, “The more I know people, the more I love my dog.”
HACHI: A DOG’S TALE
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Reviewed for Arizona Reporter by Harvey Karten
Grade: B+
Directed by: Lasse Hallström
Written By: Stephen P. Lindsay
Cast: Richard Gere, Joan Allen, Sarah Roemer, Jason Alexander, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Erick Avari, Davenia McFadden, Robbie Sublett
Screened at: Critics’ DVD, NYC, 3/5/10
Opens: DVD on sale 3/9/10
“Hachi: A Dog’s Tale,” is Lasse Hallström’s remake of a 1987 Japanese picture based on a true story of a dog whose kinship with his owner was so great that after the man’s death, the dog would hang out by Tokyo’s Shibuya train station day after day for a decade. A bronze statue of the Akita can be found at the train station, a well-deserved tribute to the bond between canine and human.
Director Hallström, whose “The Shipping News” in 2001 deals with an emotionally beaten man who returns with his daughter to reclaim his life in Newfoundland, is well attuned to small, tender stories that evoke tears from the audience. His “Hachi,” scripted by Stephen P. Lindsay, is a tear-jerker, but one of the very best kind. Some say that half the families in the U.S. own dogs, which makes one wonder why some time after its introduction at the Seattle Film Festival, the movie went straight to video. “Hachi,” which used twenty separate puppies and three adult Akitas, deserves to be seen on the big screen, but you’ll do well to buy the DVD unless a) you have a heart of stone; b) you’re like Kevin Kline’s character, Otto, in “A Fish Called Wanda,” who looked at people walking their dogs and shrugged, “I don’t get it!”
While some critics had a problem with Richard Gere’s casting as a detective in “Brooklyn’s Finest,” he’s made for the role here, given his interest in Asian philosophy and his identification as a Buddhist. The title character, Hachi, is an Akita pup who has been shipped from a monastery in Japan to the States, who breaks through the wooden crate and winds up at a train station in a small Rhode Island town (actually filmed in Woonsocket, which according to one sign is the location of Michael De Marco’s Law office on Two Main Street.) Lost and confused, he is picked up by Parker Wilson (Richard Gere), a professor of music who takes the train each day from his village to the university. Since his wife, Cate (Joan Allen), does not look kindly on having a pet, Parker expects to give Hachi away, but when the dog is unclaimed, his wife relents, and Parker has found the animal of his dreams.
Before the audience tears start flowing, we watch Parker engaged in a profession to die for at the college, rehearsing his music students in ballet, playing the piano, lecturing on John Philip Sousa before attentive young people, but he truly comes to life each day at 5:02 p.m. when the train pulls in and, lo, there’s Hachi, without a leash, waiting patiently for his main man. In one playful scene, Parker tries to teach Hachi to fetch, an almost impossible trick since Akitas are not retrievers. Parker puts the ball into his own mouth and scampers about the yard, watched with amusement by his wife and daughter, Andy (Sarah Roemer). We also see the world through Hachi’s eyes, in black-and-white though perfectly clear (some scientists believe that dogs do not see us with 20-20 vision, however). When Parker prematurely dies, Hachi does not mourn. He simply refuses to accept reality, heading off to the train station every day at the sound of the whistle and waits, with the company of station-master Carl (Jason Alexander), snack vendor Shabir (Erick Avari), and librarian Mary Anne (Davenia McFadden. After nine years of these diurnal perambulations, the town erects a statue to Hachi around the grounds of the station.
The story is not an original one. A similar piece available on DVD, “Greyfriar’s Bobby,” treats a Skye terrier taken to Edinburgh by a Scottish farmer. After the death of the farmer, the dog lies on his master’s grave each night for fourteen years, earning for himself a statue in Edinburgh’s Old Town cemetery.
As for “Hachi,” audience tears are thoroughly earned, as the Gere-Hachi chemistry is so authentic that we just know that the actor is having the time of his life playing with the pup, then with the full-sized animal that reaches up regularly on his hind legs coming right up to the actor’s chin. “Hachi” lives up to the requirements of most dog dramas—think of the title character of Dale Rosenbloom’s “Shiloh,” a beagle who escapes from his abusive owner, or Marley, from “Marley and Me,” which stresses slapstick instead of authenticity, and still my favorite, “Lassie Come Home,” about a dog whose family could not afford to keep him, a fact that is delightfully ignored by the collie. If your youngster begs you for a dog year after year and you remain untouched, don’t buy the DVD. Everyone else: get it.
Rated G. 104 minutes. © 2010 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
