A Dog's Courage Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

A Dog's Courage Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 14, 2020

Baby Boomers will probably recall with some fond nostalgia the 1963 live action film from Walt Disney called The Incredible Journey, which documented a long, dangerous trek taken by a trio of former household pets to reunite with their family. The families in A Dog’s Courage may not be the kind of humans that pets want to reunite with, since the underlying premise of this South Korean animated enterprise is that there’s a whole forest full of stray animals that have been abandoned by their former owners. And in fact the film begins with one such pet, a dog whose name is ultimately revealed to be Jacob (I haven’t been able to find any authoritative data on the English voice cast, so I can’t list performers), being dropped off in a glade, although Jacob’s owner is at least kind enough to take off the dog’s shock collar and to leave a bag of food there for him. Within mere moments, Jacob is accosted by a whole host of dogs who have been left there under similar circumstances, and the rest of the film documents this motley crew’s attempts to get to somewhere safe. It’s where that somewhere safe turns out to be where A Dog’s Courage may reveal it has a bit more subtext than might initially be thought.

A Dog's Courage won Best Animated Feature at something called the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, which is evidently an Australian ceremony that attracts a global entry list. The film's story is in one way completely rote, as might be gleaned from the reference to that long ago live action Disney movie, but on another level, the film offers some rather interesting new twists. The group of dogs that bands together includes a number of "nationalities" (at least in the English voice cast version, where a number of accents are prevalent), and that perhaps helps to give some added layers of meaning to their ultimate ability to overcome differences and work together.

The film does paint a somewhat disturbing picture of Korean culture, though. This is first evidenced by the very fact that so many human pet owners seem to be perfectly fine with just driving out to the wilderness and dropping off their dog to fend for itself. But it also returns later, in scenes that take place in a ramshackle former village that soon gives way to a developer's wrecking ball. And weirdest of all is the main "villain" of the piece, who just kind of shows up randomly to threaten the poor mutts.

The film's denouement is one of its strengths, as ironic as to the location the dogs consider a "haven" turns out to be. The film also has a really appealing style, one that is much more in tune with some of the hand drawn animated classics of yesteryear than the shinier digital creations of studios like Pixar.

A Dog's Courage Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

A Dog's Courage is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.89:1. Aside from the seemingly inevitable banding on various production mastheads as this disc gets going, the rest of this presentation is frequently very striking. A lot of the animation has an almost "colored pencil" vibe, with some cool, kind of pastel laden, palette. Line detail is typically very sharp, and the various characters are all given distinctive visual styles. The glut of outdoor material (virtually the entire film takes place outside) offers some really nice looking scenes of lush countryside.

A Dog's Courage Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

A Dog's Courage features DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mixes in either the original Korean or an English dub (optional English subtitles are of course available for the Korean language version). Aside from the voice work, I didn't notice any substantial differences in the two language mixes, with overall amplitude and prioritization extremely similar if not outright identical. The sync with the English language version is surprisingly good most of the time, perhaps due at least part to the built in artificiality of having dogs even speak. Fidelity is fine and the many outdoor scenes offer frequent opportunities for well placed ambient environmental effects.

A Dog's Courage Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailers

  Trailer A (English) (1080p; 2:04)

  
  

  Trailer A (Original) (1080p; 2:04)

Note: As tends to be the case with Well Go USA Blu-ray releases, the supplements have been authored to follow one another automatically (so that clicking on Trailer A (English) is essentially a Play All button). After the Trailer A (Original) for this film plays, the disc has been authored to automatically move on to trailers for other Well Go USA releases. Those trailers for other Well Go USA releases also play automatically at disc boot up.

A Dog's Courage Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

A Dog's Courage has some kind of disturbing foundational elements (does South Korea have a big pet abandonment problem?), but it also has an appealing story of new friends with disparate backgrounds learning to work together to achieve a common desired goal. I think the kind of almost random villainy the film resorts to wasn't totally necessary and in fact may have resulted in one too many "detours" on the way to the dogs' final destination, but A Dog's Courage has a really interesting design aesthetic and some memorable doggie characters. Technical merits are generally solid, and A Dog's Courage comes Recommended.