Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2013 February 01 • Friday

Dog x police: Junpaku no kizuna (Dog x Police: The K-9 Force, 2011) is similar to Violent Playground, only with dogs instead of kids and a serial bomber instead of a serial arsonist.

Hard-working cop Yusaku Hayakawa is punished instead of promoted for taking the initiative (which is typical of Japanese police movies and TV shows) and bumped to the security-dog unit. These are dogs that are trained to save lives and prevent crimes but it seems like they've never actually done anything because the necessary level of training has yet to be reached by them.

Hayakawa is completely out of his element in his new squad until he bonds with a white German Shephard named Shiro (which means "white" in Japanese). In an outrageous coincidence, Shiro is only alive because Hayakawa was present at his birth and saved him.

Shiro turns out to have an extraordinary sense of smell and is the only dog capable of locating the bomber's explosives in time. But the real story is of the love between Hayakawa and Shiro and how each becomes willing to sacrifice everything for the other.

It's a bit like the Umizaru movies but with the focus on police dogs instead of coast guard rescue divers, and on a much, much lower budget. The script is predictable but the performances deliver it with conviction, the dogs are great and the human-canine bonding is touching.