Japan Synopsis
“The rules of the road are simple. Don't turn back.”
An ex-con takes a job driving a truck cross country. What he doesn't know is that the truck is filled with illegal weapons and now he must fight to survive and save his family.
Titles With Overlapping Themes
Films and series that share thematic tags with Black Dog. Number on each card indicates how many keywords overlap.
Other Titles From Universal Pictures
The 1997–1999 Japan Window
In the crowded 1997-1999 Japan release window, Black Dog sits at #113 of 162. The leaderboard below contextualises its neighbours.
The 1990s Japan Landscape
1998 was the decade’s peak output year for Japan — 62 titles released, including Black Dog. Bars below show how the 1990s stacked up year by year (447 total).
Budget & Box Office Efficiency
At a 1h 28m runtime, production spent $341K per minute on screen and earned $147K per minute back.
Position in Catalog
Released alongside 61 other Japan films in 1998.
The 1157th Japan title from Japan we index (earliest catalogued entry: 1899).
Our Japan catalog contains 4,579 titles in total (2,908 films).
Audience Engagement
226 audience reviews — more than 87% of Japan films in our index.
Review volume (87th percentile) outruns trending popularity (68th) — a durable title with sustained audience attention.
Thematic Fingerprint
Tags on Black Dog, grouped by how common each theme is across the full Asian catalog. Rare tags are more distinctive signals.
- truck driver · 4
- truck · 3
- motorcycle crash · 2
- train crash · 2
- crash · 2
- new jersey · 1
- gunrunner · 1
- truck crash · 1
- truck chase · 1
- atf · 1
- action hero · 25
- motorcycle · 22
- fbi · 13
- explosion · 13
- shootout · 12
- crime boss · 7
- ex-con · 7
Reception Benchmarks
Ranked #3,422 of 4,579 Japan films indexed here (25th percentile by TMDB audience score).
Rating is -0.6 points below the Japan average of 6.9/10.
Among Japan Action productions specifically: #1,325 of 1,714 (top 77%).
Production Details
| Primary Country | Japan |
|---|---|
| All Production Countries | France, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, United States of America |
| Original Language | En |
| Production Companies | Universal Pictures |
| Runtime | 1h 28m |
| Release Date | May 1, 1998 |
| IMDb | tt0120610 |