Barking Dogs Never Bite

A weird, adequately entertaining little film. Though I can't help but feel that if you're not Korean you're missing important bits of cultural context. Feels like a dreamy slightly maudlin ramble through a big Korean city.

Bong Joon-ho ditches the usual laser-focused fight against the flow that defines his films and lets the flow of everyday life carry the irreverent adventures of this charismatic cast wherever it goes. Complete with snazzy jazz soundtrack.

So, 21st century academia is all about emasculation, bribery, and the murder of dogs? Seems about right.

Viewed February 16, 2020.

This started out funny but it left me feeling sad and slightly depressed by the end.

Quite fun and compelling, but pretty inconsistent. A weak Bong is still a good film though.

Comedy part of this film is kind of disturbing.

It wasn't only the dog that was barking ... for my money the script writer and Director were barking too !

It's always fun to go back to a filmmaker's early works to see the seeds of where their career would go. You have familiar themes of wealth inequality and even a surprise flying kick. I actually think Bong's humor shines better when it's less direct, so the outright comedic nature of this didn't work as well for me. Worth seeing as an early work of a great, though.

Well shot, but bizarre (and boring) content.

Strange shaggy dog story, but it mostly just illustrates the reasons behind the "never kill a dog" rule.

Star Rating: ★★★★

A great visual style and a handful of excellent, frenetic sequences. The jump between this and Memories of Murder is quite extreme, but Bong's direction is already surefooted here. It's the somewhat uneven script + characters that hold this one back but only slightly.

More diverse and daring than most narratively twisters of its time -- Requiem for a Dream, Memento, you name it --, as Joon-ho invests in a jazzy, noirish score to depict both scenes of subtle extremity -- that homeless dude and the street cleaner eating dogs -- and hilarious brief moments of farcical comedy -- the girl running into a door, imagining herself as a TV celebrity punisher and so on. These elements would "gently" collide in his following two films, Memories and Host. What a start.

A greater level of realism and better cinematography than you'd see in most comedies. It's sharp and funny.

All of Bong Joon-Ho's films are black comedies to some degree, but this is this most comic. It's always a pleasure to see Bae Doo-na and the film has some charming and quirky touches. I have a really hard time with animal cruelty, however, especially when used for humor. This and a few other mean-spirited elements were an obstacle for me. It's to Bong's credit that I ended up liking it anyway, but I can't say I loved it. Worthwhile for Bae and some of the offbeat filmmaking flourishes, though.

There's a big difference between comedy an comedy-drama and a big difference between comedy and Korean comedy. I don't get this at all, tried 45 minutes and it's not a comedy. A comedy should be funny, a black bleak comedy should at least be watchable

even on his earliest work, Bong has a knack for coloring his stories with socioeconomic struggle and the miasma of modern life. the humor softens the blows and keeps up the energy. a harsh, and smooth jazzy soundtrack and some unique erratic shots bring it home