Hachiko

Hachiko was a real-life Akita who belonged to a professor in Tokyo in the 1930s. When his master died suddenly, the dog spent the rest of its life -- seven years -- faithfully returning to the local railway station (Shibuya) every day to await its master's homecoming from work. Its canine loyalty, some might say pigheadness, is commemorated by a statue at the station.

I've seen a similar statue at Simonstown station in South Africa, and in Discovery Bay a neighbour's massive hound could be seen every weekday waiting on a slope above a bus stop. Like Hachiko, it also knew instinctively what time of day it should turn up, report for duty, show obeisance to the alpha animal or whatever primeval thought process it followed.

A movie about the dog was made in Japan in 1987 (Hachiko Monogatari). It was sentimental and tear-tugging. When Richard Gere decided to re-make it as Hachiko : A Dog's Story, starring himself as the dog-owning professor, he understandably Americanised the location. Inexplicably though, by having the young Hachi (meaning the lucky number of eight) shipped from a Japanese temple to a New England address that doesn't notice its non-arrival.

Showing his own version of Hollywood loyalty, Gere retained the Swedish director, Lasse Hallstrom, who'd worked with him on The Hoax, a critically-acclaimed film and box-office disaster. (Immature movie critics would want to remind readers that Gere could hardly pass over a director almost called Lassie whose breakthrough feature was My Life As A Dog, but I'm too mature to do that outside parentheses.)

Surprisingly, Gere kept the dog's breed. He should have known better, as he's worked in Japan and surely knows his shiatsus from his chihuahuas.

Akitas, the movie's simplistic script tells us, are mankind's longest-serving canine friend, for 4,000 years. It doesn't take that long for Gere's cuddly plump brown-haired puppy, found lost at the commuting professor's local station, to be happily accepted by the professor's wife (Joan Allen) and daughter. With a quick cut, the movie time-jumps the puppy into a fully-formed mostly white-haired dog whose ancient origins clearly lie in a handsome wolf pack.

There is one major problem for movie-makers working with an Akita in the lead role. The dog breed is as close to expressionless as man's best friend can be. This may have been totally acceptable in Japan, where a hero is supposed to be inscrutable, loyal unto death, and never distracted from his goals, even by a frisky female poodle.

Other than licking, staring intensely and looking handsome, Hachi doesn't do much to justify a 90-minute movie. (Parenthetically, an immature critic would note that this is also a dog that never does Number Ones or Twos, rubs against visitors, chases cats or causes human allergies. Okay, this is a fable about love, but touches of canine reality might have enriched it.) The one novelty is seeing scenes from the dog's viewpoint, which is apparently virtually monochrome, but the device doesn't increase perceptions of the dog's thoughts.

Hachi's crucial dramatic scene is the day it senses its master will die. Thus, believe it or not, which I found hard to do, it decides to bring a ball to him for the first time in order to try to keep him at home. Hachi is a deadpan character, but the human cameos stuck in the railway station and the professor's life are even less credible caricatures.

Even harder to believe is the apparent commercial nous of Gere's distributors in the USA. They haven't screened the movie publicly. It opened in Europe, and got a pun-ishing licking from the critics in London.