Cast: Emilio Echevarría, Gael García Bernal, Vanessa Bauche, Goya Toledo & Álvaro Guerrero
Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Rating:
Enetertainment Quotient: 20%
Genre: Thriller/Crime
Runtime: 154 min
Language: Spanish
MPAA rating: R

Synopsis:
The story of this film has three interwoven plots

1. Octavio & Susana: Octavio (Gael García Bernal) is an average youngster who wants to make money by entering his dog into illegal dog fights. He loves Susana – wife of his brother. He wants to save all the money earned through dog fights so that he could elope with her one day.

2. Valeria & Daniel: Valeria (Goya Toledo) is an actress and a super model. Daniel (Álvaro Guerrero) is the editor of a fashion magazine. He is fed up with his wife. He buys Valeria a posh flat and starts living with her. Valeria is fond of a dog and she treats the dog like her son.

3. El Chivo: El Chivo (Emilio Echevarría) is a rag picker and an assassin. He leaves his family long back to become a guerilla. During his old age, he longs to meet his daughter. He is fond of dogs and gathers the stray dogs in the neighborhood. The rest of the story is all about how he contacts his daughter.

What is special in the film?

1. Screenplay: The screenplay of the film is unique. Lives of three people get severely affected by an accident. The accident is shown from different angles when narrated the different stories. And these three stories are narrated in chapters.
2. Love & violence: This film discussions love and violence by juxtaposing them.
3. Dogs: The title ‘Ameros Perros’ is translated in English as ‘Love’s Bitch (Dog)’. There is close correlation between the fate of people and dogs in this film. Dogs make a remarkable impact on each of these three stories.

The scenes I liked:

1. El Chivo kidnapping both brothers and throwing a gun between them to sort the things out.
2. El Chivo sticking his photo on the head of the guy who is with his family.

Copy cats:

1. The screenplay of Mani Ratnam’ Yuva is influenced by the screenplay format of Amores Perros.
2. The Valeria story has some inspiration on Madhur Bhandarkar’s Fashion. Magazine editor buying a posh flat in front of the heroine’s hoarding part is an inspiration to Fashion.

Tailpiece:
Alejandro González Iñárritu worked as a DJ in a radio station before becoming a director. Hence you could see the music in this film having good flavor. He invented this screenplay technique with Amores Perros and followed the similar style in his later films ’21 grams’ and ‘Babel’. This movie was nominated for Oscars in Best Foreign Film category but lost out to ‘Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon’. This film has severe dog violence. Hence the animal lovers are advised to stay away from watching the movie.