Red Dog
Production year: 2011
Countries: Australia, Rest of the world
Cert (UK): PG
Runtime: 88 mins
Directors: Kriv Stenders
Cast: Bill Hunter, Josh Lucas, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Noah Taylor, Rachael Taylor
Is it a children's story for adults? Or an adult's story for children? Well, it's a doggy story for humans, anyway: an avowedly true-life tale that comes across like a well-meaning PG-certification of the real world. Red Dog is a Greyfriars-Bobby-type story from a remote mining community in Western Australia: the dog in question went on a legendary, heartrending quest to find his master who had died in an accident – the dog was said to have journeyed thousands of miles before coming home, and was the subject of a 2001 novel by Louis de Bernières on which this film is based. Josh Lucas plays John Grant, an American who adopts Red Dog; Noah Taylor plays Jack Collins, the local barkeep, and there is a gallery of tough mine-workers who turn out to have hearts of gold. The actual journey of Red Dog takes up disconcertingly little of the film: the rest is concerned with his legendary and unreal-sounding adventures in this remote community.
