Indie films are the best, and this one proves it.

Antonia Banderas befriends a homeless puppy...and trains him to be a killer dogfighting money-maker. source

Bullet Head, an intense 2017 American-Bulgarian crime thriller

written and directed by Paul Solet, should be as familiar to movie fans as Pulp Fiction and any other lurid, brilliant, haunting film from the likes of Quentin Tarantino.

"A portion of the proceeds of this movie will go toward eliminating dog fighting, rehabilitating its canine victims, and promoting awareness and education about the humane treatment of man's best friend."

Why didn't this movie win a gazillion awards?

The acting, the camera work, the sound track, everything in it is spot-on. I kept wondering where Solet found a warehouse like this one. The stuff inside, the hiding places, the doors, the long empty hallways, just everything about is visually rich--and the stuff of nightmares.

The opening footage is from the view of a dog on a leash, so we see more legs than faces, but it's riveting. Provocative. All too soon it becomes horrific as we see dogfights about to begin. Mercifully, writer/director Paul Solet spares us the actual fights, but we see the aftermath, so we aren't spared much. Piles of dead dogs. Names on the wall, bets made, cash heaped on a table. A puppy named "Money" grows into a beast as awesome, powerful, and seemingly immortal as Cerberus, the gigantic hound from hell.

Four thieves who make mistakes while pulling off a heist pick the wrong hiding place when they hit a warehouse. Literally, they hit it, in a way that reduces them to three bad guys, but somehow, we empathize with them as if they were the good guys. The youngest one, known mostly as "Kid," starts out as a drug-addicted Millennial with zero common sense, but flashbacks to his childhood have us rooting for him and aching for the horrors his alcoholic father inflicts. All three of these men tell stories while trapped in this warehouse, and all the actors bring an amazing kind of authenticity to their roles. Why am I liking these criminals so much? Because they have so much more humanity than the seemingly respectable guys in the film.

Three accomplished, award-winning actors reel us in: Adrien Brody, Antonio Banderas, and John Malkovich.

source
Wait, that guy on the left isn't Banderas...

Equally praise-worthy in this indie film is actor Rory Culkin

(yes, the brother of Macauley, star of all those "Home Alone" movies).

WARNING: They will still your heart.

Even though they look like derelict drug addicts of petty, street-hardened criminals. Or maybe all the more so once we learn through flashbacks (all cinematically brilliant) how each one turned to a life of crime.

So they all end up together in this abandoned warehouse which is actually an underground dog fighting ring.

A ginormous, powerful, seeingly immortal mastiff

makes the best hair-raising, horror-movie creature I've ever seen. Because this is no imaginary creature from the black lagoon. "De Niro" the Destroyer is a real-life dog:

source: sanderskennels.com

Three dogs of the Perro de Presa Canario, a.k.a. Canary Mastiff breed were used to play the role of De Niro. Their names were Curly, Ademar and Han Solo. Each of them had a different task. One more dog of the breed appears in the movie - a little puppy. It was given as a present to Yariv Lerner, CEO of Nu Boyana Film Studios, where the movie was shot. The puppy was named De Niro. imdb.com

However, other people in real life train beautiful animals like these to become ferocious, snarling, bloodthirsty beasts.

source

Except... we get glimpses of the soul of the dog, the noble creature who isn't entirely lost under the kill-kill-kill indoctrination.

The dog, the dog, omg the dog, and the moment where Adrian Brody could kill the thing but one whimper tugs his heartstrings, and.... just watch the movie.

It's brutal, but this stuff happens in real life, in this day and age, in the USA, and all over the world. Dog fighting is sick-sick-sick and must be stopped. If I could, I would wish instant death on all who participate in this sick form of "entertainment."

The dogs. The inhumanity. The dogs!

It will be some time before I manage to put the horrors out of my mind.

And the injustice of a movie like this being overlooked by the Academy Awards.

The film has a 53% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 15 reviews...
On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 51 out of 100...
wikipedia

Dog fighting is one of the most heinous forms of animal cruelty.

Learn about the underground world of dog fighting and find out how you can help stop it.
The Criminal, Underground World of Dog Fighting | ASPCA

Dog fighting

... is a type of blood sport generally defined as two or more game dogs against one another in a ring or a pit for the entertainment of the spectators or the gratification of the dogfighters, who are sometimes referred to as dogmen. In rural areas, fights are often staged in barns or outdoor pits; in urban areas, fights may occur in garages, basements, warehouses, abandoned buildings, back alleys, neighborhood playgrounds, or in the streets. Wikipedia

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