8/10
Delightfully eccentric black comedy
25 August 2004
Warning: Spoilers
BARKING DOGS NEVER BITE (AKA: A Higher Animal) (2000).

Delightful black comedy with a signature role for Tube's Bae Doo-na as a plucky girl who witnesses a henpecked student throw a dog that annoyed him off the roof of a neighboring apartment building, and proceeds to hunt him down for the rest of the movie.

Things get funkier when the guy realizes he tossed the wrong animal! One memorable scene has crusader Bae, in her ubiquitous yellow windbreaker, chasing the villain across rooftops in slow motion, while in the background, hundreds of imagined onlookers, also in her trademark attire, cheer her on! Many may cringe at the apartment janitor with an affinity for dog meat, but the filmmakers wisely treat this as an everyday occurence - not some shock gross-out thing as most Westerners might be inclined to expect - and acknowledge it as part of the culture that the younger generation is not exactly comfortable with. The Korean DVD subtitles provide the title as A HIGHER ANIMAL. Perhaps by the time you read this, it will be listed in the alternate title section on the main page. I give it an 8.
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