Translating roughly as "Love's a Bitch", Amores Perros tells three stories of love, graphic injury, and dogs. In the first, a young man gets involved in the world of illegal dogfighting and with his brother's wife; in the second a model, injured in a car accident, loses her dog into the gap below the floorboards in the apartment she shares with her new lover; and in the third, an old hitman seeks to reconcile with his daughter while doing the inevitable "one last job".
The film begins with a quick note that none of the dogs were mistreated, but either they drugged a bunch, managed to make highly convincing dummy dog corpses, or found a bunch of genuine dog corpses, because there are some pretty limp looking dogs in this. The editing hides a bunch, but if you're disturbed by implied animal mistreatment, you might want to stay home for this one. For everybody else, though, this is an intriguing trip into Latin America, another great example of the "three stories around one story" genre exemplified recently by Pulp Fiction and Go. As with these previous two, most of the pleasure is in the journey, so I'll spare the details, except to note this was nominated for best foreign film at the Oscars (coming second to Crouching Tiger), critics all over the place have redefined the word "rave" over Amores Perros, and it's one of the four foreign-language films I've paid to see at the cinema.
So yeah, this one rocks. Go see it, you'll love it. Unless you get freaked by the dog bits.