YMMV / Danny the Dog

• Complete Monster: Bart is an ill-tempered mob boss who murdered a woman for rejecting his advances and enslaves her son, Danny, into becoming his attack dog, having him beat up and kill whoever Bart wants and live to inhumane conditions—including being fed dog food—for years. When Danny is offered money if he fights in Wyeth's underground death matches, Bart threatens to castrate him should he not compete and kills his opponent when Danny refuses to do so. Bart and his goons go after Danny when the latter decides to leave him, while also having intent to kill a family who took Danny in. When finally defeated, Bart goads Danny to kill him in his attempt to prove that Danny is a killer just like him.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Danny is finally free from the mafia and has saved his new family and re-connected with his past, but his upbringing and training has left him with a mental disability that, going by similar real life cases, he will probably never be able to fully recover from.
• Evil Is Cool: Bart is complete scum, yes... But his sheer Made of Iron is nothing short of impressive. And his reaction after Danny gives him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown? Not a pathetic Ain't Too Proud to Beg, but a shit-eating Strike Me Down with All of Your Hatred!. Being played by Bob Hoskins doesn't hurt, either.
• He Really Can Act: While Li is no stranger to Drama in the East, in the West he shocked audiences with his performance as Danny.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Adding "the Dog" to one's name as a mark of martial badassery was a minor meme in the mid-to-late 2000s.
  • Spaniards in particular might remember José David "Batu the Dog" Delgado, the most famous of a batch of proto-Youtubers who became viral around this time for issuing ridiculous challenges to each other (which also included Mario Vaquero, back then known as John Cobra, who became infamous for crashing the 2010 Spanish Eurovision nomination event with a profanity-filled rant).
• Moment of Awesome: It's Jet Li. He has to have at least one crowning moment of awesome. It's in his contract.
• Retroactive Recognition: Scott Adkins has an early appearance as one of the underground pit fighters Danny goes up against.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The climax could have been much more engaging had Bart followed through with his threat to go after Danny's new family directly for his disobedience. Imagine if he, say, kidnapped Sam and Victoria and forced Danny to fight an army of Mooks to rescue them, and/or Danny had been forced to struggle with his new Thou Shalt Not Kill policy once Bart had them at gunpoint. Instead, they just hide in a closet while Danny fights off wave after wave of Mooks by himself until only Bart is left, and they come out only to convince Danny not to kill him.
• The Woobie: Danny, with his collar on. He's been mistreated his entire life and warped into little more than a killing machine who has no idea how to react to genuine kindness.

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