Review of Hell Dogs / ヘルドッグス地獄の犬たち, directed by Masato Harada

If you’ve been reading my blog for the past month or so, you’re probably going to realize the common theme of what I’ve been watching movie wise is just vibes. I’ve been in a chaotic state of mood where I end up scrolling through Netflix for like fifteen minutes, wasting so much time in the process, and then I randomly pick a movie I’ve never even heard of before or even would have watched under normal circumstances.

Sure, you can say something about me broadening my horizons here, but in the end I think these are a bunch of weird movies I’m simply chowing down on for a hot minute.

Anyways, this is how I ended up watching Hell Dogs. I was in the mood for a Japanese language kind of entertainment, and knew I didn’t have the attention span over that week to commit to a television drama. So I ended up scrolling through the Japanese movies and ended up on Hell Dogs.

Maybe it was the title, or maybe it was the fact I had just written an article about yakuza movies for work. I pressed play and didn’t think much more of it.

Onwards with the review!

A police officer dealing with trauma goes undercover for a violent Japanese gang.

Our main character in this movie is Shogo, who, after the murder of someone he really loved, has a lot of issues to unpack mentally. He’s obviously been left traumatized by the incident and it follows him wherever he goes, and there’s one thing that constantly pops up in his mind.

He wants revenge for the fact that this has happened, and the perfect opportunity lands in his lap right at the beginning of the movie. There’s a mission available, and they want him to go undercover to befriend the yakuza.

He has to pretend to be a member of the yakuza himself in order to gain their trust, and the police tell him to go after a very specific member of the group: Hideki. The police believe that Hideki and Shogo have some very deep similarities, and because of that, he can be the only one to go up against him.

But there’s a catch: Hideki is quite unhinged in the way that he, nor anyone else, can control him.

Hideki isn’t someone to mess with, and somewhere along the way, Shogo starts to build bonds and attachments to the same people he’s supposed to go up against. There are quite a few twists and turns in this movie, and I don’t want to spoil it for those who aren’t anywhere near the finishing point yet.

This certainly is a movie though that keeps you on your toes, and while I didn’t care for the brutal action that weaves its way through the story like a snake, I thought that if someone were a big fan of Asian action movies (which I have seen quite a few of), this movie might feel a little bit standard for you.

The most compelling part of the movie are the characters and their motives. There’s a deep incision into each character and what it means to get revenge or do something that isn’t considered morally right. In the end, I think this is what drives the story.

As someone who consumes a lot of Korean films that ruminate on these themes, I think Hell Dogs is something I’ve seen many times before, but it does have some of the conventions of a typical yakuza movie. There’s also the trope of a cop going undercover, which then turns on its head the deeper we go into the story.

Overall Thoughts

All of this said, I think Hell Dogs is a decent movie. It’s nowhere near my favorites or in a top ten list for action, but for a movie that I think has very little press and was surprised to see on Netflix of all places, it’s pretty alright.

If you like action movies that take the brutality and length to the next stage, you’re definitely going to admire the action sequences found throughout this movie. I was looking away for some parts because I thought it was a little much for me at times.

Regardless, I’m glad I watched this. Maybe I’ll revisit it several years down the road.

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