Amores Perros

Translated, roughly, “Love’s a Bitch.” I don’t mean it as a putdown in any way when I say this is a sort of Mexican Pulp Fiction. The director is a fan of Tarantino, but not a slavish imitator. He takes the elements of interconnected stories, fracturing of time, and mixing hard and ugly action with off-the-wall elements and makes them his own. It is the first feature for Alejandro González Iñárritu, who later did 21 Grams and is now at work on something called Babel, which I will eagerly await.

P.S. They assure us no dogs were harmed in the making of this movie, and it’s a good thing the warning was right up front, because the dogfights look gory as hell. All done with buckets of red dye, trained animals, tranquilizers, and clever cutting, folks.