Rabid Dogs (2015)
** (out of 4)
A bank robbery goes horribly wrong so the robbers need to make an escape. They end up taking a female hostage but to gain access to a new vehicle they then jump into the car with a father who is trying to get his sick daughter to the hospital for an operation.
This is a remake of Mario Bava's 1974 masterpiece, which in my opinion is one of the greatest Europeon crime movies ever made. It's one of the most intense movies you're ever going to see and the director brilliantly put you inside the car with these criminals to the point where you could feel the terror created by them. It's a quite remarkable film so this remake had a lot to try and live up to.
If you're a fan of Bava's film then you really shouldn't go into this remake expecting anything similar. It's clear that the Bava film was going for tension and suspense whereas this one appears to just want to remake certain scenes from that movie and explode with a tad bit more graphic violence. I will freely say that there's nothing in this remake that compares to the original and it's actually more on par with that film's alternate version known as KIDNAPPED.
The problem with this film is that there's just really nothing too special about it and had it been an American film then it probably would have gone straight-to-video. The performances are decent for the most part and there are a couple nice action scenes at the beginning. The start of the violence is handled quite well and catches you off guard. The problem with the film is that there's really no tension from start to finish and there's not an ounce of energy or emotion to be found.
RABIG DOGS isn't a complete bomb but at the same time it doesn't seem to want to try and improve on the original. There are scenes from the original that are re-done here and there are some new twists done here but nothing is exciting or all that fresh. I'm one that fully supports remakes because it's interesting to see how someone else will do something that we're familiar with. Trying to remake such a great movie would always be a hard challenge but RABID DOGS just is so bland on so many levels that I don't see what the point was.
