Product Description

Documentary filmmakers André and Rémy have found an ideal subject in Ben. He is witty, sophisticated, intelligent, well liked-and a serial killer. As André and Rémy document Ben's routines, they become increasingly entwined in his vicious program, sacrificing their objectivity and their morality. Controversial winner of the International Critics' Prize at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival, Man Bites Dog stunned audiences worldwide with its unflinching imagery and biting satire of media violence.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #40718 in DVD
• Brand: Image Entertainment
• Released on: 2002-09-24
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Black & White, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 95 minutes

Amazon.com
This Belgian satire (in French with English subtitles) is dark, dark, dark--but also right on the money in its sly sendup of the media's fascination with violence and its complicity therein. This mock documentary has a trio of filmmakers shooting a cinéma vérité feature about a garrulous serial killer who lets the film crew follow him around as he selects victims and then dispatches them. But at what point does filmmaking become participation? These hapless documentarians soon find out as their subject eventually pulls them into his world, including a gun battle with a rival film crew and their own criminal star. Gruesomely hilarious, with a deadpan wit that's hard to resist. --Marshall Fine

From The New Yorker
A mock documentary from Hell: a film crew follows a personable young psychopath (Benoit Poelvoorde) as he dispatches his fellow-Belgians. There is every sort of murder here, and the film spares us no detail; its gritty, abrasive look only adds to the gruesomeness. Yet there is comedy of a cruel sort, for Benoit is effusive, even charming, as he talks us through the ways and means of a dedicated killer. He is also a bigot, stuffed with barroom philosophy; the film comes across as the plain man's guide to slaughter. It was directed by Rémy Belvaux, who appears throughout as the documentary director-shy and flustered, torn between keeping his crew alive and wanting to join in the hideous fun. The main thrust of "Man Bites Dog"-that cinema has become addicted to its own violence-is not a new idea, and the result veers dangerously close to an exploitation flick; but you have to admire Belvaux's and Poelvoorde's nerve in taking the satire to its lurid logical extreme. In French. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker