Animals suffer harrowingly in this, especially dogs, so if your squeamish, don't see it for that reason.
It's actually
three connecting stories, the first is
about a young man who's Doberman runs off one day....and ends up becoming a champion in illegal dog fights - A viscous
gangster who breeds champion killer dogs for dog fights practices by setting his dogs on any stray or lost dog in the streets, he tries to set it on an old enigmatic tramp's dogs, but the tramp shows a large machete and the gangster
takes his dog away, and then it sees the Doberman, which unfortunately kills the prize fighter stone dead. Gangster leans on the owner to pay
him for his dog's death, owner realises that making his own dog take part in such fights will make his dreams come true, but his fights are
almost always against the same gangster's pets, finally, with enough money already to fuel his dream and the pregnant girl on the brink of agreeing to go with him, the young man uses some of the money to have brother in law beaten close to death, and then the last dog fight in which he plans to recover his losses, goes wrong when the gangster shoots the dog.
The dog is badly hurt and bleeding severely, young man tries to rush it to a vet but not before angrily stabbing the gangster who gives chase to him in big car chase scene resulting in the young man crashing his car into one driven by a young woman coming the other way - in fact the film starts with this chase, as it is the link between the three story strands - we see the tramp seen earlier coming to assist the rescue, and the story
shifts focus onto the lady in the other car, she is an up and coming actress who has just netted a major perfume advertising deal, (we have
seen her ads and chat show appearances on the TV sets of other characters so far) rescued from the crash, but with her leg badly broken, and forced to wear callipars and sit in a wheelchair, she has little to do but sit at home playing with her cute little terrier dog, while her husband (who may or may not still carry a torch for his own ex-wife) goes to work. Unfortunately the new house he bought her is not the dream home they
expected, the floorboards are rotten, The dog actually falls through a small section of them, and is trapped under the house, unable to get to it the
actress hears it yelping for hours on end and goes mad with distress, -her husband comes home but is unable to help, so the torment goes on for
days, then, finally getting herself out of the chair, she looks in the hole to find it full of rats, and still hears the dog yelping - her hubby want s
to put poison down to kill them, but she knows her dog is still in there, - driven crazy by this she tries to kill herself, but only succeeds in
cutting the blood supply to her leg, so that gangrene sets in and she loses the leg, angry and bitter the hubby tears the floor apart and rescues the
dog, reuniting it with her as she comes home.
The last and best of the stories is that of the tramp, El Chivo, who was once a major
assassin, (Carlos the Jackal style) until caught and
imprisoned for 20 years), which caused his wife to (with his permission at first) fake his death for their daughter, only to find 20 years on that he wants to re-introduce himself. Meanwhile Chivo is visited by the bent cop who apprehended him all those years before, (a great sleazy sliceable
performance by the actor playing the cop) a final; job of killing a young man's brother in a revenge motivated assassination run, Chivo agrees,
takes half the money (with agreement to be settled up after the job) and sets off, with his dogs in tow to stalk the victim,, - he is doing this when
the car crash happens , and after helping free the human victims, Chivo makes off with the wounded Doberman, nursing it back to health and adding it to his menagerie, but while Chivo goes out to steal photos of his daughter from her house, the new dog uses its killer instincts to waste the rest of the pack. Chivo almost kills the dog, but forgives it and tames it, he then goes after the victim again, catches him, kidnaps him and ties him to a pillar in the cellar of Chivo's home for several days, - making the other brother who he calls Abel comes to pay the money, Chivo takes it, and kidnaps him too, locking him in the cellar with the brother, and the gun, leaving them to sort their own mess out without involving him, - he then cleans himself up, leaves a tearful answering machine message on his daughter's phone confessing to all, assures her he will be back one day and leaves town with his new dog, in the background we see the posters of the actress from the perfume ads being taken down, and the now blind in one eye brother-in-law walking arm in arm with the girl who stayed with him in the end anyway......