Cover of White Dog – Criterion Collection

I wonder whether they’ll ever make a movie about today’s black-on-white violent crime, of which there is a lot.  What was made instead, though it was decades ago, was Sam Fuller‘s White Dog (1982), about a dog trained by a sick racist to attack black people.

TV actress Kristy McNichol plays an aspiring thespian who finds the dog, initially lost, and then discovers what he was intended to be.  A white dog.  Like other Fuller films, this one is moderately unusual but, in addition, it shows that Fuller soundly possessed a mind.

At a training spot for animals used in movies, a black man acted by Paul Winfield painstakingly tries to cure the dog of its ugly instinct.  Progress is so frustratingly slow that the dog has time to escape and, yes, actually kills a man.  The film shows us the ease with which evil becomes real, becomes evident, and how lost we often are when trying to eliminate it.  Fuller’s directing is far from ideal with its camera zooms and clunkiness, but the story’s power to disturb remains.  McNichol and Winfield turn out decent, if unspectacular, performances.  As always, Burl Ives is agreeably authoritative.

It shouldn’t be this way, but every time a good deed is done in the “inspiring” It Could Happen to You (1994), it seems ersatz.  In large part this is because Nicolas Cage, in this Capra-like little film, lacks the liveliness and purity of heart of, say, James Stewart in Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life.  Both are morally encouraging guys, but only one is truly authentic.

Ah, but Andrew Bergman‘s movie needs more verity in any case.  There is third-rate characterization in Rosie Perez‘s role, and an ending more moralistic than moral (with the punishing of both Perez and Stanley Tucci).  The acting is often a letdown except for that of Bridget Fonda, who provides the only depth the film possesses.  One critic opined that Fonda “isn’t at her best” in It Could Happen to You.  What nonsense.  She is superlative.