Quick recap: Three seemingly unconnected stories are told, although everyone crosses passes with another at some point. Each story has something to do with love as well as something to do with a dog. Thus, Amores Perros.

Octavio y Susana, a story about a guy who is in love with his brother’s wife. He also makes money dog fighting.

Fun (?) fact: For once, I put my 3 years of Spanish to good use because I knew that ‘Amores Perros’ means ‘love dogs’. Awww, love dogs. I love dogs! Upon doing some research, I found out that it is actually an expression, meaning roughly, ‘love’s a bitch.’ Oh.

Daniel y Valeria, a story about a guy finally getting to be with his mistress, a model. She has a horrible car accident and ultimately loses her leg.

My thoughts: In its synopsis, Netflix said Amores Perros was the ‘Mexican Pulp Fiction‘. That excited me because I love me some Tarentino. He has a way of mixing outlandish gore and humor so that you can’t help but fall in love with his movies. I also love the idea of other Tarentinos out there, with their own beautiful, twisted ideas in other countries. But then I watched the first scene, which featured a dying Rottweiler, completely covered in blood, and I knew that I had stepped into something closer to Funny Games than Pulp Fiction. Damn.

El Chivo, a story about a former hitman who  wants to be reunited with his estranged daughter.

The dying dog scene was traumatic all by itself, but then the next scene featured a dogfight with people around the arena sweeping up the buckets of blood and hauling off dead dogs. The movie had a disclaimer before the opening credits that no animals were actually harmed, but everything was so realistic. As I looked up trivia about Amores Perros, I learned that the dogs were actually just playing and the director edited the scenes to make it look like fighting. As for the dead dogs, they were just heavily sedated. That’s all well and good and legally I can see how that wouldn’t be considered ‘harmful’, but most dogs if given a choice, wouldn’t care to be knocked out for a long amount of time.

So, as you can see, it was nearly impossible to get past all the gruesome dog deaths. It reminded me of all of those people who whine that they can’t sit through movies like Marley & Me, knowing that the dog will die in the end. They have no idea that there is much worse out there. And for those people who have watched Marley & Me as well as Amores Perros, what the hell is wrong with you??

Besides torturing dogs for two and a half hours, the theme of love also carried throughout the movie. And by love, I mean people being awful to each other. In the first story, Susana is married to Ramiro who abuses her and robs people on the side. His brother Octavio is in love with her and shows it by practically raping her every chance they are alone together. So, basically what I took from this movie is that people who are mean and cruel to dogs are also awful people in real life.

Final review: 3/5. I see why so many people love this movie, but it was just too much for me.

Up next: Monty Python and the Holy Grail