Mutt Boy

His Life as a Dog. Chul-min Park's mother died in childbirth; the boy was raised off-handedly by a cop father so distracted by police duties in the city of Miryang, he didn't mind calling his son and the family pooch by the same name: Mutt Boy. Left mostly unsupervised to roam like any stray, Mutt Boy gets into a blood feud with hoodlums from the upper classes (who don't mind eating canine meat) and runs with a pack of school-dropout misfits called the Miryang Junior Klub. Detective Park, meanwhile, doggedly tries to take down a seemingly-untouchable businessman; he has better things to do than repeatedly bail his feral kid out of trouble. Father and son are both flawed characters with strong moral codes and ideas of right and wrong. In a way, they're fighting the same battle. K.T. Kwak's hit mob drama “Friend” (26th CIFF, 2002) catapulted him into the forefront of Asian commercial directors, and in MUTT BOY he sires another street saga of outstanding pedigree. (In Korean with English subtitles)