A FILM / MOVIE REVIEW

     HACHIKO

"A Dog's Tale" is based on a true story of the love and devotion between a man and a dog.

The story is told by Ronnie who is the man's grandson. When Ronnie has to give a presentation at school about a personal hero, he chooses to tell the story of his grandfather's dog Hachiko ("Hachi" for short). Despite his classmates laughing, Ronnie describes how his grandfather, Professor Parker Wilson, finds a lost puppy which had been freighted from a Japanese monastery to the United States. The crate's tag tears, and when the puppy pushes his way out of the crate at the train station of Bedridge, a small Rhode Island town, Parker Wilson, a professor of music in nearby Providence, takes the dog home for the night.

Over the next year or so Parker and Hachi become even closer. Parker tries to train Hachi, but the dog refuses to do normal dog things like chasing and fetching. One morning Parker leaves for work and Hachi follows him to the train station and refuses to leave without his master causing Parker to miss the train to take the dog home. The next day Hachi follows Parker again who this time gets on the train. When Parker returns to the train station after work he is surprised to find Hachi waiting for him. Hachi learns what time that Parker will be due home every day and constantly goes to the station to wait for him at 5:00pm, quickly becoming their new daily routine.

One winter day morning, Hachi curiously fetches the ball when Parker is about to leave for work. The same day Parker suffers a fatal and unexpected brain hemorrhage while at work and thus never returns home on the train as usual. Hachi, waiting in his usual place for Parker as the train pulls up, doesn't see his master disembark, and instead patiently waits and waits for hours even as it starts snowing. Eventually Parker's son-in-law, Michael, comes to get him. Although everyone tries to make Hachi understand that Parker has gone, Hachi is apparently unable to accept that his master won't be coming home. Instead he returns to the train station each day and continues to wait.