For marketing purposes, Amores Perros has been tagged in America as Mexico's answer to Pulp Fiction. Perhaps the director has taken the easy way out by copying Quentin Tarantino's narrative style. While Alejandro González Iñárritu's film shares some of the structural elements of Tarantino's modern classic, its three stories are nowhere near as integrated. They all share a common point in time and place, beginning with a car accident in the mean streets of Mexico City, and all three separate stories involve relationship problems and dogs. In fact, the two better stories even share the same dog.

Tarantino may have popularized juxtaposing narratives that have a tenuous fated relationship, but this structure has been around at least 74 years. In 1927, Thornton Wilder won a Pulitzer Prize for The Bridge Over San Luis Rey, which becomes a meditation on Fate as it begins with the collapse of a footbridge in Peru and then delves into the lives of the people who perish. Taking this same concept of intertwining lives through a weird twist of fate, Hitchcock turned the conceit into a true art form and dazzled us for years.

Now we have younger filmmakers doing this more loosely, pumping up the pace to match Go!, and expecting arthouse status. Not that Iñárritu's film is undeserving—two-thirds of it actually work pretty well. Had the director chopped out the unnecessary middle third to reduce its running time to a more appropriate 2-hours, I'd grade this film higher.

Amores Perros looks very gritty, filmed with a sepia filter (like Traffic) with a lot of hand-held cameras to give us a feeling that we are truly experiencing the rough street life of Mexico City. If you've been across the border, you may even think that you can smell the fried tortillas and tacos, so realistic is this breakthrough independent Mexican film. (We could get even more a sense of the urban blight if they passed out air filters through which to breathe while watching the film.)

The film immediately thrusts us into a dark underworld of Mexican machismo with some brutal and bloody images of dog fighting. Fortunately, the movie prepares us with an opening notice that no dogs were harmed during the filming; otherwise, people would be leaving the theater in masses. If you see someone enter the film after those opening credits, do them a favor—tell them the dogs are all ok. Otherwise, those poor people will not have a chance to enjoy what's on screen (if they like dogs at all).

The phrase "Amores Perros" is loosely translated for Americans as "Love's a bitch," which makes some sense for the film, since each person does have some challenges with love. More literally, the phrase indicates something about "oving dogs," which also fits into the disjointed stories.

After an opening car chase and crash, visually interesting but disorienting, the film settles down at a slower pace and allows us to piece together the lives of a few characters. We see Octavio (Gael Garcia Bernal), a charismatic and charming unemployed slacker from the underclass who is obsessed with his sister-in-law and dreams of running off with her to Juarez. (If you've ever been to this bordertown, you know this is like jumping from the armpit of the world to its asshole.)

We are drawn into Octavio�s story. After all, he loves his killer Rottweiler named Cofi, despite using him as his meal ticket, and he cares for his sister-in-law Susana (Vanessa Bauche). Octavio's brother is a louse, a cashier who robs stores on the side and gives his wife cheap trinkets before slapping her around. Will Susana leave her husband for the idealistic dreamer who relies on the bloody dogfight underground, with its underbelly of thugs, to save the necessary money to escape north? Given Susana's nature, the knowledge of the promised land of Juarez, and the opening frenetic scene, we already know how this will turn out...but the story has some interest. Credit the acting abilities of Bernal for much of that, as well as the visual eye of director Iñárritu.

We then switch to the weakest story, the one about the magazine executive, Daniel (Alvaro Guerrero). This man leaves his loving wife and two daughters for a shallow supermodel, Valeria (Goya Toledo), whose image is prominently displayed on a building for much of the story. The canine connection here is with Valeria, who is obsessed with her small dog and can't think of anything else when he slips through a hole in the floor. Her life is radically changed from the accident, but the whole story feels trite and mundane for the most part. The only touch I liked was Daniel's poignant silent phone call to his wife, and that's not enough to carry the segment, so I was glad when Iñárritu mercifully switched to the last segment.

Finally we learn about the bearded, homeless old man, who loves his dogs but also operates as a hit man. We see snatches of him throughout the movie, and I found his story the most unique and satisfying. El Chivo (Emilio Echevarria) establishes himself as the most eccentric and unique of all the characters—He has a relationship story, hinted at by his apparent obsession with a young girl, that unfolds as he prepares his last hit. It becomes hugely intertwined with Octavio's killer rottweiler, and the connection isn't pretty. (Jeopardy question to this answer: "What has four legs and an arm?") Hired by a businessman to kill his partner (and half-brother), El Chivo comes up with a most creative method of dealing with the hit.

As interesting as I found the middle-aged hit man, I wish the director had spent more time developing his story—or at least connecting Octavio's story with it, leaving out the innocuous super-model story. Amores Perros was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and even received a slight buzz for a possible upset over the superior Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. That underground word of mouth must have come from a few young MTV watchers, who seem to become mesmerized at any high velocity imagery they see.

Iñárritu establishes his keen visual eye, proves he can lay surrealistic images over realistic scenes with the best film technicians, and can allow passions to erupt from the screen. Now, if Iñárritu could imitate the lyrical beauty and pace of Like Water For Chocolate to develop his characters more, and if he could control his frenzied camerawork more like Scorsese does in his best work, we could hail the coming of a Mexican filmmaker who will stand among the greats. Of course, juxtaposing all the elements presented here effectively would take the genius of Hitchcock. But overall, Amores Perros ranks as an impressive film debut, and I'll look forward to seeing what direction Iñárritu takes.