Paramount Vantage, 2007, 122 minutes - add this title to your Netflix queue
In nearly five decades of watching Oscar telecasts - a statistic I shudder to contemplate - I cannot recall anyone ever thanking the dog.
Behind every great movie, there is invariably a great dog, on one side of the camera or another. The mopey family mutt, the Jack Russell who does comic reaction shots, the make-up artist's Corgi who keeps the actors pacified during the interminable down times between shots. (Go here for an alphabetized list of famous movie dogs).
When Joel and Ethan Coen go up to the podium this Sunday night to pick up their best director prize for "No Country For Old Men," as they are widely favored to do, may they break with tradition. I hope they thank the Pit Bull.
He was a brown Pit Bull, as you may recall. Early in the picture, he gives Josh Brolin a run (or a swim, to be precise) for his stolen money, giving ferocious chase down a rushing stream.
Maybe there were several Pit Bulls on call for the scene, I can't really say. The end credits list six animal trainers, along with monitors from American Humane. And the Coens are practical filmmakers: they purportedly had nine or ten babies corralled on the set for "Raising Arizona," in case one baby wasn't in the spirit for a take.
In any event, Brolin got the better of the ill-fated creature, who was merely doing the bidding of some ruthless drug dealers. Dragging himself from the water and loading his gun with swift resolve, Brolin plugs the dog in mid-air, just as it is hurling itself at his throat.
The scene takes up maybe a minute or two of screen time, but it's a dilly. The Pit Bull is an essential plot point: he's a warm-up, a precursor to the human Pit Bull that will be stalking Brolin for the rest of the picture, in the form of Javier Bardem. Coming 20 minutes into the film, the Brolin vs. Pit Bull encounter is also the first to really rev up the picture; when the movie had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival back in May, you could hear a gratified whoop resound throughout the cavernous Palais de Festival.
Thrilled as I am to see a Pit Bull getting prominent play in a probably-Oscar-winning Coen Brothers movie, I can't help but have mixed feelings. It's not because the dog goes down - just about everyone does in this picture - but because he's performing in service of die-hard cliches surrounding the breed. Just what Pit Bulls and their beleaguered owners need right now: a hit movie that tells everyone to watch their backs for vicious killer pits.
I just wish the Coens would take a sec to thank the dog. It's no country for Pit Bulls, old or young, and someone needs to start the good-will ball rolling.
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on Feb 26, 2008
on Feb 26, 2008