Dog Pound

Dog Pound is an excellent film. I'm not a huge "Drama" genre fan, but from the opening credits all the way to the end-credits, I was completely engaged. Acting, camera work, and production are superb. Not a lot of fluff, just raw, scene acting.

The biggest reason for writing this review is to say that I absolutely HATED the ending. Hated it. That should not dissuade anyone from watching, but yikes...what a terrible way to finish telling this story.

That is all.

Alan Clarke made the violent and barbaric movie Scum 31 years ago and there have been various attempts with smiler movies since, all trying to become the daddy of juvenile delinquent dramas, from Sean Penn in Bad Boys to Larry Clarke's Kids. This avaricious animal is the most successful attempt thus far. This attempt, albeit billed as 'inspired' by scum, is inherently a remake with three miscreants sent to a juvenile facility in Montana, with no chance of any hope of reform, forced into a system of sheer brutality forcing Butch (Adam Butcher) to go on the rampage. And though Alan Clarke's original film still has the edge, this perhaps has more relevance for a new generation of cinema goers which cleverly used real ex prisoner instead of conventionally well know actors, helping in part to set a more real and gritty tone. Having said all that I did enjoy it.

And considering it's a dog pound ... Seriously though: The movie is one of the best ones I have seen in a while, that contains people being locked-up (or in). I have to admit, that I have not seen "Scum" yet, which this movie is based on (or a Remake according to IMDb), but after seeing this, I have to go out and rent that one.

The characters on display here might feel a bit too distant and not everyone will be able to find a character he can entirely sympathize with, but that's what made it so intriguing to me. It's not showing a rose-tinted world. And it is not afraid to go ways, that other movies might have been. It's raw and sometimes feels like a documentary (though it obviously isn't).

Very good acting and a story that flows from start to finish, with no (visible) flaw in the storytelling. Highly recommended

This movie hit home for me because I was once locked up in a juvenile detention facility. The only thing I disagree with in this movie is the guards were not violent enough but the setting is the same if not worse on how you get treated by the people around you. For all the people who said this was a "Bad movie" "had no plot" you have never lived it so you would not have the first clue what this movie was attempting to convey with its ending and storyline. The psychology is nearly the same and it does not matter how you go in, your environment changes and with it you must change yourself. You may have heard the term "debt dog" but I doubt it. This movie hits as close as your going to probably get without someones story like mine.

A movie like "Dog Pound" has a lot of peers. Year after year of prison films (a dozen or two I've seen for myself) have honed a pretty basic cinematic structure. This film is about half-successful in avoiding the clichés. It does have one thing going for it - being the most recent to give a pretty much realistic account of the juvenile detention system. The pace of the story provides somewhat of the needed adrenaline charge for the thriller format, but it doesn't go nearly as far as it should. The soundtrack, for one, is a good example of this. It's virtually never needed, always intrusive. The acting is pretty much as expected. Given intense situations, the actors offer better performances than if asked to emote in a normal environment. And, if not necessarily better, at least more intense.

Kim Chapiron provides some interesting direction. Clean photography, 70s style use of zooms. It doesn't always work, but it keeps things interesting. The end result is a film that gives you enough to stay involved, if not quite enough to push it over into something you'd want to see again. Good enough.