Critics reviews

Deliberately paced, Dogs is a film that drips along. Carefully orchestrated, it is an understated theatrical film consisting of a ceaselessly trawling camera that is forever pushing in. Look at the way the film introduces Roman. The camera crawls toward him as he sits on a bench, framed by a makeshift canopy and waiting for a ride to his grandfather's house. Or, the way in which the officer inspects a foot on a dinner plate with nothing more than a fork, like a meal he's savoring.

Mircea's grisly depiction of rural Romania was instantly forgettable, and points to the difficulties a new generation of filmmakers face in coming to prominence after the much-vaunted Romanian New Wave of the mid-2000s.

Cristi Puiu's Sieranevada, Mungiu's Graduation, and Bogdan Mirica's Dogs testify to the continuing energy of Romanian cinema. Dogs is graced by the always amazing Vlad Ivanov, who here embodies pure evil as if it were no more than a matter of fact.

I'm afraid of God. But he's afraid of me, too." It's a good line—maybe a bit too good—but that's characteristic of this Romanian slow-burner's polished pulp. Dogs is above all an impressively assured and expertly assembled feature debut from commercial director and novelist Bogdan Mirica.

In a Cannes that has given us a lot of pleasures, but very few real surprises or revelations, Mirica's debut stands out, in a modest way, as both surprise and revelation—and certainly contributes to redrawing the map of Romanian cinema that we thought we knew so well.

A fine entry in the tradition of advising city-slickers-who-won't-listen to go back where they came from, this fable of lawlessness, percolating menace and foolish disregard for atavistic local traditions is enjoyable viewing for art house patrons who don't mind the occasional snippet of harsh narratively-motivated gore.