A Good Film That Could Have Been Great

Ohh My Dog tells two parallel stories that mirror each other in beautiful ways.

The first follows a young boy in Assam searching for his beloved dog, Oppu, after he is swept into the brutal illegal dog meat trade that supplies parts of the Northeast, including Nagaland. Guiding him is his schoolteacher, who repeatedly frames their journey through the Mahabharata. The boy is Arjun; the teacher is Krishna, not fighting a war with weapons but with compassion, determination and moral conviction. It is one of the film’s strongest ideas, and Amit Rai deserves credit for weaving mythology into a contemporary social thriller without making it feel forced. (Bollywood Hungama)

Running alongside it is the story of Prince, an underage construction worker in Patna, illegally employed and invisible to society. When Prince is abducted by an organ trafficking racket, it is his dog Oscar who refuses to give up on him and he is helped by another teacher played by Pankaj Tripathi. The symmetry between the two stories is what makes the film work: one boy saves his dog, one dog saves his boy.

What binds both narratives together isn’t merely love between humans and animals. It is institutional failure.

Whether it is the dog meat trade, child labour, organ trafficking or police indifference, every system appears compromised. Corruption isn’t portrayed as a handful of bad apples but as something structural, something ordinary. The frustration the film evokes comes from watching decent people repeatedly collide with institutions that simply don’t care. Only towards the end do we find a flicker of hope through the teacher’s uncle, a police officer who chooses to do the right thing. That small act of integrity becomes powerful precisely because the film spends so much time showing how rare it is.

Where the film falters, however, is in its portrayal of animal cruelty.

Having spent years working for animal welfare, I couldn’t help feeling that the film pulls its punches. The villains are repeatedly shown being wary of Oppu, almost intimidated by him. In reality, a dog caught uncovering an illegal transplant chain would almost certainly be beaten or killed the moment it showed resistance. The horror of what these animals actually endure is softened. I understand why—the film is aimed at families—but I still wish it had trusted audiences with a harsher truth.

I also wanted the film to spend more time inside the mind of the dogs themselves. Their loyalty is obvious, but their fear, confusion and longing remain largely interpreted through human eyes. A little more of the dogs’ perspective would have made the emotional impact even stronger. It tries valiantly (with the budget constraints I am sure it faced) with the Doggo, Oscar.

Some scenes, however, stayed with me long after the credits rolled.

Oppu chasing the ball, completely unaware that those innocent few seconds will separate him from the child he loves, is devastating because it feels so ordinary. That is exactly how people lose dogs every day.

The discovery of the truck packed with terrified animals is another unforgettable sequence. It doesn’t need melodrama. The images speak for themselves.

But the scene that hit me hardest had nothing to do with dogs.

When Pankaj Tripathi’s character tells Prince’s father that his son will probably lose a kidney, the frightened, uneducated father asks only one question:

“Will he die?”

When he’s told no, the father quietly replies,

“Then it’s okay.”

The look on Pankaj Tripathi’s face says everything.

It isn’t judgement. It isn’t anger. It’s the crushing realisation that poverty leaves people negotiating with suffering itself. If your child is alive, even after losing an organ, you count yourself fortunate. Few recent Hindi films have captured that quiet tragedy so effectively.

Performance-wise, Geeta Agrawal Sharma is outstanding. Every moment she appears feels completely lived-in, never performed. As always, Pankaj Tripathi brings warmth, empathy and gravitas with almost effortless ease. My only complaint is that he feels underused. An actor of his calibre could have carried even more of the emotional weight had the screenplay allowed it. (IMDb)

And then there’s Oscar.

Forget the human cast.

Oscar steals the film.

His determination, intelligence and unwavering loyalty become the emotional heartbeat of the Patna story. The makers promoted Oscar and Oppo as the canine stars of the film, and it’s easy to see why. Oscar commands the screen without uttering a single word. (The Times of India)

Technically, the film is also stronger than many family dramas. The cinematography captures both Assam and Bihar with authenticity rather than postcard beauty, while the score quietly supports the emotion without becoming manipulative. The decision to use over 250 dogs across the production gives the film a sense of scale rarely seen in Indian cinema. (IMDb)

In light of the recent Supreme Court debate surrounding stray dogs, Ohh My Dog feels particularly relevant. It doesn’t argue that everyone must love dogs. Its final message is far simpler, and perhaps more important:

If we cannot be kind to animals, the very least we can do is not harm them.

I only wish the film had gone further. It had the ingredients to become one of the most important animal rights films India has ever made. Instead, it settles for being a very good film when it could have been a great one.

Still, I left the theatre holding on to one simple thought.

One boy saves his dog. One dog saves his boy.

If only the real world worked like that more often.