Favoring pedigree dogs, a new regulation puts a severe tax on mixed breeds. Owners dump their dogs and shelters become overcrowded. 13-year-old Lili fights desperately to protect her pet Hagen, but her father eventually sets the dog free on the streets. Hagen and his pretty master search desperately for each other until Lili loses faith. Struggling to survive, homeless Hagen realizes that not everyone is a dog’s best friend. Hagen joins a gang of stray dogs, but is soon captured and sent to the pound. With little hope inside there, the dogs will seize an opportunity to escape and revolt against mankind. Their revenge will be merciless. Lili may be the only one who can halt this unexpected war between man and dog.
This movie contains 8 potentially triggering events.
In this film dogs are subject to different kinds of brutality, abandonment (which is a big theme of the film) and killings. The premise, that dogs rise up and revolt against humans, results in many dogs getting shot in the course of their battle against humans.
With the exception of Bodie and Luke (the pair of brother dogs that portray Hagen), all the animal extras were dogs recruited from shelters or from the streets of the shooting location and trained with an eye toward their humane treatment and ultimate rehabilitation by Teresa Anne Miller, daughter of Hollywood animal trainer Karl Lee Miller whose work with animals includes films such as BABE and CUJO. Approximately 98% of the dogs were adopted after filming. (From Wikipedia)
Many animals are abandoned. The movie is about the plight of street dogs who were once pets. Their owners were forced to abandon them because of an archaic law brought about by prejudice and paranoia. The dogs experience extreme cruelty, especially Hagen (main dog) who was kicked out of the car by his owner’s father (a real jerk). Hagen’s owner, Lili, is traumatized by this throughout the movie.
Lots of sad abandoned dogs and sad dogs being forced to fight. Sad dogs chained up and starved. Sad dogs in the shelter. Sad dogs being yelled at by heartless people. I hope it’s not really like that in Hungary. In Turkey, street dogs have rights.
Hagen (the main dog) does not die, but his friend gets killed by an evil dogcatcher right in front of him. Many of the abandoned dogs had been pets. People were forced to give their “mutts” to the shelter of abandoned to the streets. The law is supposed to apply to non-Hungarian breeds, but there was a rich person walking a Dalmation (which no one seemed to have a problem with).