Not to be confused with either Bobcat Goldthwait's bestiality comedy Sleeping Dogs Lie or the Rwanda drama Shooting Dogs, this low-key Canadian indie is a different beast altogether. A scrappy but often effective third feature by writer-director Terrance Odette, leeping Dogs is a tragicomic neo-realist odyssey set in Kitchener-Waterloo, a city that doesn't generally attract tragicomic neo-realist odysseys but really should more often if Odette's results are anything to go by.

This quest belongs to Gloss (Brian Stillar), a blind diabetic alcoholic who's outraged when he learns his brother has sent his dog to the pound to be euthanized. Thomas (Tony Adah) is the unlucky attendant charged with finding Gloss after he disappears from the hospital in search of his pet. The two men seem curiously medieval as they wander along a highway and through a deserted suburb. Wielding a big wooden branch as his walking stick, the film's unlikely hero comes off like an unholy combination of Gandalf, Lear and a particularly angry drunk.

Yet Odette never lets his characters become figures of ridicule. They remain stubbornly human thanks to the energetic performances by the cast members and the director's reluctance to entirely blame their often unattractive behaviour on their past woes, of which we learn only a little. Shot digitally in a rough-hewn style, Sleeping Dogs takes a while to find its paws but the cathartic final scenes are genuinely moving.

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