Hachi: A Dog's Tale

Hachi: A Dog's Tale centres on Parker Wilson, a college music professor who finds a lost Akita puppy at his local railway station and, after failing to trace an owner, takes the dog home. His wife Cate is firmly against keeping it, and Parker agrees to find it another place to stay, but the puppy settles into the household and becomes Parker's constant companion. The two fall into a daily routine: Hachi walks him to the station each morning and returns to meet the five o'clock train each evening, a ritual watched by the people around them. The story is based on a real Japanese case from the 1920s.

Lasse Hallström directed, working from a screenplay by Stephen P. Lindsey. The film is the eleventh of the twenty features Hallström has directed in chronological order, following The Hoax and preceding Dear John. Richard Gere, who also produced, leads the cast as Parker, with Joan Allen as Cate, Sarah Roemer as Andy, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa as Ken, Erick Avari as Jasjeet and Robbie Sublett as Michael. Twenty-eight cast members and sixty-four crew are credited.

The production had a budget of sixteen million dollars and took about forty-seven million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 8.1 out of 10 from over 304,000 votes, and on TMDB 8 out of 10 from more than 7,000 votes, while the critics' rating stands at 5.9 out of 10 from twenty-eight reviews, so audiences have responded far more warmly than critics.