Dog Eat Dog

In China They Eat Dogs is a fun slice of Danish brutality, for those who can handle it.

“You are the most boring man in the world, Arvid," says Hanne (Trine Dyrholm) to her live-in boyfriend, the protagonist of the new Danish actioner In China They Eat Dogs. "I've seen pollen counts that are funnier than you." Arvid (Dejan Cukic) is the sort of guy who'll nudge Hanne awake in the morning to complain about cookie crumbs she may have left on the nightstand, so her frustration is perfectly understandable. However, as the average passerby may easily deduce from the blazing gunfire on the movie poster, Arvid's life is about to get substantially more interesting.

Before we can get to that, though, there's an obligatory framing device to be had, a bar that serves as the equivalent of the diner in Pulp Fiction (and Doug Liman's rave-themed knockoff, Go). In walks an aging American by the name of Richard (Lester Wiese) in a Hawaiian shirt, who tells us, in English, that he's waiting for a man named Arvid. When the bartender (Jesper Christensen) inquires why, also in English, Richard begins his tale, or rather, Arvid's. It all seems like a rather cynical ploy to get some English in there merely to sell the film internationally, rather than an actual organic part of the narrative, but rest assured, it does eventually connect, and certainly not in the way one would expect.

But back to Arvid, who speaks only Danish up until the film's very end. As befits one so boring, he works in a bank. When particularly psychotic customer Franz (Peter Ganzler) is turned down for a loan, most likely because looking like a barroom brawler and yelling in a bank employee's face isn't all that conducive to a smooth business transaction, the disgruntled fellow decides to rob the bank instead. Fortunately for the corporation, however, Arvid happens to be wielding a squash racket, with which he swiftly disarms the unwashed lout. Proclaimed a hero by the media, he is given two weeks vacation time, which he plans to use to put the spark back in his relationship.

If it were going to be that simple, we'd have no movie. Arvid comes home to find that Hanne, in one of those super-speedy acts that can only be managed in on-screen breakups, has left and taken virtually every item in the house with her, after having spray-painted the phrase "Fuck you Arvid" on the wall. Arvid's bad luck with women continues as a seemingly random female stranger comes to his door and begins hitting him. She then proclaims herself to be the girlfriend of bank robber Franz, and tearfully announces that the money was going to go toward artificial insemination for her. Feeling guilt tripped and inadequate, and after receiving a telephone brush-off from Hanne disdainfully urging him to "go out and do something surprising," Arvid does what any man in his position would do: He contacts his psychotic brother Harald (Kim Bodnia) and begs him to be an accomplice to a bank robbery designed to benefit a complete stranger.

Preposterous? Perhaps, but no more so than any number of trying-to-be-hip heist movies. Director Lasse Spang Olsen and writer Anders Thomas Jensen seem, by all accounts, to have been shooting for "Tarantino-esque," but what ensues is closer to Guy Ritchie (Snatch), which is not a bad thing at all: It means we get more story, less irritating conversations about TV shows. It also results in a cartoonish, cavalier attitude toward the taking of human life, which is mostly appropriate, except in one instance. One of Harald's employees is a dim-bulb immigrant named Vuk (Brian Patterson), who gets repeatedly blown up and abused for laughs, while the rest of the cast continually lob racist insults at him and call him "Puk," which seems likely translatable as "puke." Even the eventual karmic retribution meted out to his tormentors doesn't quite erase the unpleasantness of it all, and while it might seem trivial to quibble in a movie where people get killed left and right, one worries that the filmmakers might actually be inclined to agree with Harald, who when accused of being a racist responds, "What's wrong with that? You make it sound like an insult."

Surprisingly, the initial heist goes off without a hitch (the breaking of both of Vuk's arms not counting for anything). This is an unexpected twist: Films of this sort are nearly always about the fallout from a heist gone bad. So, to keep things lively, Arvid pushes his luck and tries to break Franz out of prison. Since Danish prisons not only lock people up directly inside the outer wall, but also apparently allow anyone who wants to to drive right up to said wall in a van full of explosives, this part isn't too hard either. But when Franz turns out to not be exactly what he seems, then and only then do things start going wrong.

In China They Eat Dogs grossed more in Denmark than Star Wars: Episode I (and yes, a sequel's already being prepped), which suggests that the Danes prefer sadism to computer-generated muppets (Lars Von Trier and his Dogme cohorts generally back up this theory). The movie suggests that everything is relative, and that even brutal, racist violence is good for the soul so long as one believes it is. The film even goes so far as to speculate that God Himself endorses such an approach. The title, while also cleverly conjuring up word associations with Hong Kong cinema and Reservoir Dogs, refers to this kind of subjective morality -- eating dogs may seem horrific in the West, but it's not wrong in China, and if that's the case, what good is any kind of moral judgment? If that again seems like a bit of a leap, just think of it as satire, which is one possible interpretation.

Which is not to say that the film is a bad one. For the most part, it's a hard-rocking, gun-toting guy movie, with a truly bizarro surprise ending you won't anticipate even if you try. But if you're one of those folks who always have to be sympathetic to a major character, you may find precious little to latch on to.