Benoît Poelvoorde makes the killer disturbingly good company in this mock documentary. It is a sharp, uncomfortable provocation, though some of the later shocks repeat a point the comedy has already made.
Man Bites Dog is a nasty, intermittently funny crime comedy that runs short of fresh ideas before it runs out of violence. Directors Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel and Benoît Poelvoorde build it around a documentary crew following a killer, Ben, played by Poelvoorde. The question is how readily people will accept cruelty if the person committing it makes an agreeable companion. That is worth asking, and the film gets considerable mileage from allowing its murderer to be sociable.
Poelvoorde does most of the persuading. He gives Ben enough ease to make watching him pleasurable without suggesting that we ought to mistake him for a decent man. We laughed at his genial manner with the crew, then felt ashamed of how quickly it had won us over. The killings make the cause of that shame plain. For a while, the comedy works without anybody having to explain what is wrong with our laughter.
Bonzel’s cinematography uses the mock-documentary form to make the camera’s continued presence troubling. Once a crew has decided that murder is suitable material, every further moment of filming becomes a choice we can question. Belvaux and Bonzel also appear as Rémy and André, which keeps the people making the record within the film rather than allowing them the comfort of invisibility. It is an effective way of making the familiar excuse of merely observing sound inadequate.
Editors Eric Dardill and Belvaux manage the shift from black comedy towards increasingly punishing violence, and the loss of comic ease is deliberate. By then, Ben has become watchable. Taking an interest in him begins to feel grubby. Yet the cutting cannot solve the larger problem of repetition, as further brutality keeps demonstrating something the film has already established. Across 96 minutes, there is too much insistence on how appalling the material is and too little development of why these people want to film it.
The music credited to Jean-Marc Chenut, Philippe Malempré and Laurence Dufrene leaves less of an impression than Ben’s manner in front of the lens. The discomfort comes chiefly from seeing a personable man treated as a suitable subject while he kills people. That gives the film a firm basis for its comedy, but the filmmakers increasingly seem to treat our disgust as proof that the satire is working. We need more than another demonstration that the camera will keep running.
As a spoof of fly-on-the-wall reporting, it is shrewd about the attraction of access to somebody appalling. It asks us to consider what a crew might accept to keep a compelling subject on camera, a question that gives the mock-documentary format some purpose beyond imitation. Yet as a crime comedy, it gradually narrows its options until the next outrage seems the only available development. The directors have made their point clearly enough for the later insistence to feel unnecessary.
That makes this a qualified recommendation for viewers who like their crime comedy cruel and are prepared for graphic violence. The 18 certificate deserves attention, especially if the mock-documentary premise sounds like a promise of harmless absurdity. Poelvoorde is reason enough for the interested to try it, but the film’s determination to punish amusement becomes wearing. Do not choose it on the assumption that everyone sharing the sofa will find the same things funny.
