Micitype Pretty Good

FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

brchthethird I honestly wasn't expecting too much from this movie, but for what I got I was entertained and never bored. BLACK DOG is a fairly standard late-90's B-grade action movie, but its colorful characters help it to transcend the genre clichés and make it somewhat memorable. The basic plot is that Jack Crews (Patrick Swayze) is in need of some extra money and agrees to take a truck-driving job transporting some goods. Little does he know that it's some illegal guns, and soon he has people on his trail as he tries to make the delivery.I've never been too much of a Patrick Swayze fan, mostly because I don't think he can act that well. He has some charisma, for sure, but the only movie I've really enjoyed him in prior to this was ROAD HOUSE. Here, he doesn't get that kind of a role to play, but thankfully the supporting players pick up the slack and make the movie worth watching. Of those cast members, the most entertaining were Meat Loaf as a Bible-quoting madman, and Charles Dutton and Stephen Tobolowsky as a bickering FBI and ATF agent, respectively. Their short scene that opens the film is, in my opinion, the best part and sort of sets the tone for what follows, at least when they're on screen. Randy Travis also has a supporting role, but all they can do with him is make jokes and references to his real-life career as a country singer.In general, the acting was decent for this type of movie. The action, of course, was well-done. By virtue of being produced before Hollywood became obsessed with CGI and shaky-cam, this film features real stunts, real explosions and crisp, clean action sequences done with some flair. Yes, having cars and trucks explode on impact in a collision is ridiculous, but it's also ridiculously entertaining to watch. Most importantly, the truck-driving sequences were filmed in an interesting way, and actually on the highway. Other positives I can think of are a suitably bombastic score and some gentle soundtrack cuts courtesy of Randy Travis. I don't really care for country music, but he's one person I can tolerate.The negative aspects I can mention are all fairly standard for the genre. There's a lot of plot holes, story threads that aren't followed up on (or at least satisfactorily), and of course the premise. Part of this can be chalked up to the run time. At 89 minutes, it is a little light on story and character development, but then again it didn't exactly need to be complex. Overall, this was much more fun than I was anticipating. It's by no means a good movie, but it's pretty entertaining for what it is. When all is said and done, there's a lot worse ways to spend your time. Also, they do explain what the title means, in case you were wondering.

gavin6942 An ex-con (Patrick Swayze) takes a job driving a truck cross country. What he does not know is that the truck is filled with illegal weapons and now he must fight to survive and save his family.This film is given low ratings, and I suspect the reason is that people wanted it to be more than it is. This is the story of a man who has one chance to make a big score, and he is followed by trouble -- explosions and car crashes ensue. If you wanted more than a nice popcorn-munching film, you put the wrong DVD in, my friend.I enjoyed this one. I did have a question or two about the plot that I think was never fully answered, but then I had to refer myself to the previous paragraph: I was expecting too much and should just relax. After that change of perspective, it is a joy.

david-sarkies One would expect that a movie of this name would actually play the Led Zepplin song of the same name somewhere. They don't, though they do mention it. Maybe they just couldn't get the rights to the song. That doesn't matter because it is a pretty decent film anyway and they don't need one Led Zepplin song to make it any better.The movie is based around a truck driver that has had his license suspended for life for culpable driving (vehicular manslaughter in the US). He has just been released and is given a job repairing trucks. His boss is a crook though and wants him to run a shipment of guns from Atlanta to New Jersey, something which he does not want to do. When he discovers that his house is about to be repossessed by the bank, he changes his mind and takes the job.The movie thus becomes a road movie in a very big truck. But there are numerous other aspects, like the theme of appearance and reality and trust. There are numerous people in the movie that have many different motives and we are never sure who is on the truckies side. The only people we know are who they claim to be are the driver and his family. Everybody else seem to have other things on their mind, and even more, they may seem bad and turn out to be good.One may be interested in why the movie is called Black Dog. Decent name, but there is a reason behind it. It seems at first that it may have something to do with the black pitbull in the back of the truck, but this is not the case. It is actually a truckie legend, that before the truckie falls, they will see the black dog. It is a harbinger of doom and a humbler of proud souls. The black dog is only added as character background and there is never any appearance of it during the journey.Black Dog is an action movie with big trucks. If you like trucks, then Black Dog is a good movie. If you like seeing trucks get smashed up and destroyed, then you will seriously like Black Dog. It has a simple plot with a fair bit of action. There is time where is focuses on character development, but it is seeing the truck scenes that captures your minds with this movie rather than the interaction.

Boba_Fett1138 For the genre movie that this is, it's a pretty enjoyable movie to watch. It's definitely no worse or better than any other similar simple straight-forward action flick from the '90's.Of course the movie is suffering from more than 1 problem though. One obviously is its story. It's simple and actually doesn't make a lot of sense and is a real unlikely one. I mean, why did Red ever let the truck drive off from his place, only to dangerously attempt to hijack it later, on the very same day. But oh well, without this story we wouldn't had all those exploding trucks and action scenes within this movie.Well, it's not like the action is much spectacular though. Funny enough there are lots of exploding trucks and cars but they already seem to blow up when one of the passengers farts. Action-wise this movie just isn't good or spectacular enough to watch.Another problem with the movie is that it has far too many villains in it. It's like the main characters against the rest of the world. The movie also doesn't seem to be able to make a choice who to make the main and most important villain of the movie, with as a result that all of the villainous characters aren't really anything memorable or evil enough, since the movie spends to much time on showing the many different villainous characters of the movie.The movie is from the period when Patrick Swayze's career of course already was more or less on a death end. Nevertheless he's always good and serious with every role that he plays. He's also credible in this role, despite his already showing age. He was perhaps a tad bit too old at the time of this movie to play the main lead in an action movie. Meat Loaf mostly seemed to have had fun with playing his role, which shows on the screen. But like I said before, since he plays a villain, he didn't get the screen time he deserved. There are parts in the movie were he completely disappears, only to show up 20 minutes later again.But despite this all, the movie is good and entertaining enough to watch. It's current rating on here would suggest that this is one of the worst action flicks of the '90's but it hardly is. It's also no better than some action flicks but also definitely no worse than some others.6/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/