Dead Dogs

‘Your past is a dead dog…’ is the cryptic slogan advertising this low-budget thriller about the painful loyalty between two brothers. Dead Dogs won the American Independent Award with good reason: using only minimal means, Clay Eide managed to put a modern coat on the ‘thriller noir’ from the sixties and seventies. To lead the characters towards their inevitable fate, he chose to use claustrophobic camerawork and sober black & white. Tom Kale, the young night-porter at the Driftwood Inn, has led a lonely and bitter life since Carmen, the love of his life, left him for his brother Derek. Previously Tom had been a crook, but these days he spends his nights playing chess and flirting with a married chamber maid. Until his brother Derek, who maintains himself and Carmen with petty crime, appears in the hotel and persuades Tom to help him with a simple yet grand plan: robbing the Driftwood Inn. Tom’s good will is broken in one fell swoop by the big-brother manipulations of Derek and a burning desire for his ex-lover. During the weekend of 4 July, America’s national holiday, things get out of hand: after the grand fireworks, nothing will ever be the same again.