WORSE than Marley and Me?? I didn't think a movie could get sadder!
I was seriously BAWLING at the end of that movie. I seriously could not stop crying just imagining my dog in that situation.
OK,
WARNING I AM GOING TO TELL YOU ALL OF THE MOVIE NOW.
This is more than a spoiler alert, read this and you don't even have to watch it.
OK, so Richard Gere is a professor of music or dance or some ****. Something really girly and he's all in touch with his feelings. He gets off the train on his way home from work one day, and sees this puppy at the train station. He was in a crate, which busted. He has a collar with a tag that says something in Japanese. He asks the train station guy if he can hold him to see if his person comes, train station guy says he will hold him for the night but he will take him to the pound after that. Richard Gere decides that's no good, so he takes puppy home.
He gets home, wife is all hotsy totsy and wants to get it on. He is afraid to tell wife (Joan Allen) about the dog so he hides puppy in his study and goes up with wife to do the wild thang. Puppy gets lonely, busts out of the study and goes upstairs where he licks wife's foot and she flips out like a ninja because she has decreed no more dogs!!!! RG says he was a stray and he will find his owner and put up posters and stuff, puppy is just there for the night.
RG gets all attached to the puppy but he goes around town trying to put up posters and find the puppy's person. He takes puppy to the Japanese professor who reads the tag and tells him it says Hachi which is the number 8 and means magical happiness perfection or some **** like that. Anyway, it means super lucky awesome dog, and now RG is intrigued.
He takes puppy to animal control, who tells him that puppy would have two weeks then would be put down. RG can't do that, so he takes puppy home and keeps putting up posters to find the owner.
Then he starts trying to teach the dog to fetch and stays up late at night watching baseball with puppy and sharing popcorn with him, and basically he falls in love with Hachi and wife sees this and decides Hachi can stay.
Hachi is so devoted to RG, he walks with him to the train station every morning then walks home by himself every day. He stops at all the shops on the way and makes friends with the whole town and everybody knows who Hachi is and they all love him. In the afternoon, Hachi walks back to the train station and waits for RG to get off the train, then they walk home together. For years and years this continues, Hachi loves his master and RG is very attached to his sweet doggy.
Then RG dies. Joan Allen sells the house and Hachi moves in with the daughter, RG & JA's son in law and their new baby. Hachi keeps running away to look for RG. He ends up at the train station, and he waits and waits. All the townspeople feed him and pet him but know Hachi is waiting for his master so they leave him alone. Hachi sleeps under a train car at night and returns to the platform each day, waiting for Richard Gere to come home. (This is where I start crying.)
This continues for SEVEN YEARS. Every day for seven years, Hachi waits for his deceased master. The townspeople just accept that this is what Hachi has to do, so they feed him and take care of him and feel sad for him.
Then one day, Hachi falls to sleep in the snow on the platform and dies. As he dies, he has visions of Richard Gere getting off the train and coming home to him. Then he romps and plays with his beloved master that he has missed so dearly, and they "cross the Rainbow Bridge" together (but kind of backwards because the dog's person died before the dog died).
And then we all weep loudly because it is the sweetest story of love and devotion and it is sad and adorable all at the same time.
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