"Amores Perros" (2000)

Starring: Emilio Echevarria, Gael Garcia Bernal, Goya Toledo, Alvaro Guerrero, Vanessa Bauche

First, the Lowdown: A car accident unites three bittersweet love stories.

Octavio is in love. Unfortunately the object of his affection, Susana, is already married to Octavio’s abusive older brother Ramiro. This does not dissuade Octavio, however, and he fantasizes about escaping with Susana to a better life. One day his friend informs him that Ramiro’s dog, Cofi, just killed a champion prize fighting mutt. Sensing inspiration, Octavio takes Cofi to a dog fighting promoter to earn extra cash. When a match turns sour, Octavio and his friend flee in a car, only to crash at an intersection.

Daniel is in love. Having left his wife for Valeria, a supermodel, his life is happy at first. Then Valeria gets into a car accident that severely damages her leg. To make matters worse, while playing with her dog Richie, it chases a ball down a hole in the floor of her apartment and gets lost in the sub-flooring. And worse still, her agent tells her that because of her accident, her lucrative contract for a perfume line has been pulled. Meanwhile, Daniel has no idea how to cope with the situation. He loves Valeria, but the combination of depression and physical pain make her lash out.

El Chivo is no longer in love. A former guerrilla for the Zapatista movement, El Chivo now lives his life as a vagrant with a pack of dogs. For money he is a contract killer hired through a policeman. Ever escaping his past, he drifts from day to day until reading about his estranged wife’s funeral in the paper. Memories rushing back to him, El Chivo reconciles with finding a way to contact his long lost daughter, who thought he had died when she was two years old.

The great thing about this movie is while it does borrow heavily from the Quentin Tarantino School of storytelling with its interweaving chapters, it manages to do correctly without looking too imitative. This movie is not for the faint hearted, there is a lot of animal abuse going on during the film, and anyone who’s lost a dear pet (or had them badly injured) will find themselves more than a little moved.

Line of the movie: “I hoped after I saved the world that I would return to you.”

Four and a half stars. Let’s have a war.