is so far the biggest turd I've ever seen. I'm just speechless about the suckiness of this movie that I don't even know if I can write a review. But I'll give it a shot.In what is supposed to be a futuristic Spain, a man named Dante escapes from illegal immigrant lockup to go in search of his girlfriend Ula. Dante's trip is made more challenging by the vicious half-robotic Rottweiler dog chasing him through the country, attacking and maiming whomever stands in his way.
Doesn't sound all that bad, right? Killer robot dog? Yeah, that's what I thought too. But somebody went off in a complete wrong direction with that premise and produced a movie that is slow, boring, nonsensical, badly acted, and utterly retarded in almost every way. I'll give it .5 points for the shooting of some pretty nice-looking locations - then I'll take that half point away for claiming that this movie takes place in the future and never once shows us anything futuristic looking. An isolated house where people still hang their clothes outside to dry? A seedy red light district? Dang, I can't wait for the future!The movie isn't even really about the Rottweiler chasing Dante. It's more of a side plot and one that is not even remotely as exciting as it should be. Take that dog out of the equation and replace it with plain old cops or something and all you have is a drama movie about a dude on the run, trying to find his long lost love. L-A-M-E. Oh! And for some reason that is never explained, Dante can't seem to remember the details of just what happened when he "lost" or "left" Ula somewhere. No idea. Can't remember. It happened like a year ago and this is supposedly the love of his life but he can't remember a big event such as (sorry to spoil the ending here - wait, no I'm not because none of you are going to watch this POS are you?) his girlfriend being raped by some sleazy guy and then killed by his dog? Don't believe it.
Actually, going back to the problem of the badly represented "futuristic" Spain, the Rottweiler is the only indication of future technology or whatever. Again, no explanation is given as to how the Rottweiler got that way (jeebus, could they at least have given the dog a name so I don't have to keep calling him Rottweiler?) seeing as how he was just a normal dog in the flashback where he killed Ula. Apparently after Dante beat the shit out of the dog, his owner called got all pissed and made him a robot! Yeah, that explanation works. Sure.
Thought the Rottweiler eats and/or attacks a lot of people throughout the course of the movie, even those parts are not good enough to save Rottweiler. The dog was trained well and gives a nice ferocious performance but his attack scenes are lackluster. Nothing all that inventive, just growling and screaming and blood and innards and close ups of the dog eating a fake human body. Ho-hum. The gore work is okay but there's nothing new or suspenseful in any of the death scenes.
So what I'm trying to say here is that I'm pretty pissed off that somebody would make a movie called Rottweiler, have it star a half-robotic killer dog and then give me 90 minutes of an annoying dude with a bad haircut and no memory wandering around from place to place, meeting more strange and annoying people and getting them killed. THAT SUCKS. Again, why would you even include a Rottweiler chasing this guy when it could have easily just been some corrupt prison official making Dante's life hell? It just makes no sense with the core story.
Okay, now I feel a little bad. I usually try to include something positive about every movie I see, just 'cause I'm a nice person. So I'll give it a point for the ending showdown between Dante and the Rottweiler, which has now been burned up and all that remains is a metal skeleton. That was fairly cool and the graphics were well done.
This movie, however, will NOT get points for any of the following: the awkward dialogue; Dante running around naked for 10 minutes; the more-than-awkward sex scene between Dante and a woman he has known for less than 10 minutes; the close up shot of a chicken screaming before it is attacked by the Rottweiler; or the random appearance of several scorpions throughout the film, as if they were symbolic or some shit.
Rottweiler really could have been so much cooler than it turned out to be. But with a script that doesn't seem to know where it's going or how it got there in the first place, all we have is a mess of a movie that just so happens to have a killer robot dog in it. Nothing else makes sense or is even the least bit enjoyable to watch in any way.
. The dog was trained well and gives a nice ferocious performance but his attack scenes are lackluster. Nothing all that inventive, just growling and screaming and blood and innards and close ups of the dog eating a fake human body. Ho-hum. The gore work is okay but there's nothing new or suspenseful in any of the death scenes.So what I'm trying to say here is that I'm pretty pissed off that somebody would make a movie called Rottweiler
, have it star a half-robotic killer dog and then give me 90 minutes of an annoying dude with a bad haircut and no memory wandering around from place to place, meeting more strange and annoying people and getting them killed. THAT SUCKS. Again, why would you even include a Rottweiler chasing this guy when it could have easily just been some corrupt prison official making Dante's life hell? It just makes no sense with the core story.
This movie, however, will NOT get points for any of the following: the awkward dialogue; Dante running around naked for 10 minutes; the more-than-awkward sex scene between Dante and a woman he has known for less than 10 minutes; the close up shot of a chicken screaming before it is attacked by the Rottweiler; or the random appearance of several scorpions throughout the film, as if they were symbolic or some shit.
Rottweiler
really could have been so much cooler than it turned out to be. But with a script that doesn't seem to know where it's going or how it got there in the first place, all we have is a mess of a movie that just so happens to have a killer robot dog in it. Nothing else makes sense or is even the least bit enjoyable to watch in any way.
Totally agree with you, thought this hilariously bad. Some of the effects were pretty good though.
ReplyDeleteWow. Just wow. Wow...
ReplyDeleteIn other words, they didn't even try...
ReplyDeleteBurned exoskeleton keeps fighting? Where have we seen that before?
@Ty: Glad I'm not the only one who suffered through this. Yes, the effects were at least realistic and good - I liked the stuff at the end but it just wasn't good enough to save the movie.
ReplyDelete@Xploit: So, I take it you won't be seeing this cinematic joy, either? Good!
@Alex: I know, right? It's a complete rip.
You didn't laugh your ass off at the chicken?! I laughed my ass off at the chicken. The rest of the movie was some of the worst garbage I've ever seen though.
ReplyDelete@Mister Bones: I kinda laughed at the screaming chicken, but it was so completely out of place in this movie! It made no sense, much like the rest of the movie.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to have to disagree on all levels here. ROTTWEILER is great for a lot of reasons and I own my own copy so I can watch it whenever I want and show it to others that do not know of its greatness. Allow me to elaborate....
ReplyDeleteOne, the robot dog is half ghost, as well. Tell me where there's another ghost robot dog and I'll gladly watch that over and over again.
Two. Brian Yuzna made this. Brian Yuzna brings us all sorts of cheap thrills in his movies, as does his Fantastic Factory. Even his version of FAUST is worth watching.
Three. There's some gender role reversal stuff happening that you don't see too often. A woman raping a man? That scene is pretty effective and pitch perfect.
Four. The whole game the couple is playing, going from country to country without passports. I think this sounds rad. It's punk and it's dangerous and Lord, don't they pay for it.
Finally and most importantly, Paul fucking Naschy is in this! That is all that needs to be said. Nevermind that he's sleazy and gets some in the back of an SUV. Paul Naschy.
I would give it another watch. There's much to love here.
The story itself may not make sense to some, but if you watch the flashbacks closely enough, you'll understand what the Rottweiler is in the movie for.
ReplyDeleteJust to correct you on his name, his name was Rott (not much of a name, but still a name).
Rott was the dog of the prison owner and dictator/ruler of the 'futuristic' Spain and in his natural life was trained to obey the command "kill." (Hence the slogan of 'Eat. Sleep. Fetch. Kill.')
In the process of obeying his master's command to kill Ula, Dante beats Rott in the head with a steel pipe, breaking Rott's teeth and eventually killing him...or so Dante believed.
Later, Rott's master has him turned into a cybernetic beast out of possible love for his old pet/friend. Rott, now able to kill once again, sets his sights on Dante, on a mission for revenge for killing him in the past.
In one of the flashbacks, you hear an African elder tell Dante that the fog surrounding them and Dante's destiny is full of evil. Later, we see that the fog is what resurrects Rott when he is killed a second time. The scorpions are also a symbol of this evil that seems to follow Dante where ever he goes.
As the movie progresses, Dante remembers more and more of what he had forgotten thanks to the electrical current that ran through his body when he was tazered? into submission by the prison owner. Remembering, but not wanting to believe that Ula is in fact dead, Dante continues his search until it leads him back to the prison and he is forced to face the prison owner and the reality that Ula, the love of his life, is in fact dead.
Finally, when the truth about Ula is revealed, Dante digs up Ula's corpse and in a hallucination, she tells Dante to remember his promise, to remember that he promised he would die for her. Dante, keeping his promise, turns to face the now skeletal Rott and clashes with the beat one final time as they both go into the fire.
The main ending, when Rott finally shuts down for good, is when Rott's anger and desire for revenge, and Dante's destiny of death are all satisfied.
Basically, Rott was a symbol of Dante's reality or his 'destiny'. Try all he liked, in the end, he was doomed to never be able to escape it and like all of us, is eventually forced to face his fears, and the harsh reality that what we love and hold dear will eventually be gone and can never come back.