Tradition and Morality at the Finish Line

Read Time:5 Minute, 30 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Going to the Dogs
–

Genre: Documentary, Sports, Culture
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 1h 35m
Director(s): Greg Cruttwell
Where to Watch: in UK cinemas November 7, 2025

RAVING REVIEW: GOING TO THE DOGS begins with silence — the kind that hangs heavy over an empty stadium, its lights long gone out. For much of the 20th century, this was the soundtrack of working-class Britain. Greyhound racing wasn’t just a pastime; it was a ritual, a community, a shared language of excitement and release. Director Greg Cruttwell’s documentary treats that history not as nostalgia, but as a question: what happens when a culture built on speed, noise, and adrenaline is forced to slow down and listen?

GOING TO THE DOGS is not an exposé, nor is it propaganda. It’s a dissection — one that invites viewers to consider the sport’s conflicting identities: an emblem of community pride and a source of ethical unease. It’s about people as much as animals, and about how deeply identity can be tied to an institution’s survival, even when that institution’s ethics are in question.

The documentary’s structure mirrors the sport itself — a cycle of buildup, anticipation, and release. Cruttwell blends archival footage with interviews, contrasting the once-packed stadiums of postwar Britain with the sparse, half-lit tracks of today. Voices from both sides of the debate collide. Trainers and enthusiasts speak of the sport’s legacy and its loyal fanbase; activists counter with evidence of cruelty, overbreeding, and neglect. The result is a film that never preaches but instead lets contradiction speak louder than conclusion.

One of Cruttwell’s great strengths as a documentarian is restraint. He resists sensationalism, refusing to reduce either camp to caricature. When he allows figures like Rab and Liz McNair or Kevin Hutton to share their passion, the film never mocks it. Their connection to the animals feels genuine, and their frustration with being branded villains carries weight. But then, as the film turns to former insiders and animal welfare campaigners, the underbelly surfaces — the casualties of speed, the greyhounds that disappear once they’re no longer profitable.

Rather than deciding who’s right, Cruttwell asks whether the question itself might be outdated. Can a sport born in another era exist ethically in today’s world? What does it mean to preserve culture if doing so comes at the cost of compassion? These are heavy questions, and GOING TO THE DOGS doesn’t tie them up neatly. That’s precisely why it works.

Visually, the film carries a somber elegance. Cruttwell and cinematographer Alex Priestley bathe their images in muted tones — concrete, rain, the dull glow of stadium lights cutting through fog. There’s beauty in decay, but it’s never romanticized. The slow tracking shots through shuttered grandstands and silent kennels are as haunting as they are empathetic. The film understands that nostalgia is a trap; it seduces even those who know better.

The sound design deepens this melancholy. The thud of paws against sand, the crack of the starting bell, the faint cheer of an unseen audience — these auditory fragments become echoes of memory. Cruttwell doesn’t score them with triumphant music or dramatic cues; he lets them breathe. The effect is immersive but unsettling, like walking through a museum exhibit where the artifacts still move.

What elevates GOING TO THE DOGS beyond its surface topic is how it frames greyhound racing as a microcosm of Britain itself. The class divide is impossible to ignore. The sport’s decline mirrors the erosion of working-class leisure culture — pubs closing, community clubs shuttering, industries collapsing. For many of the participants, racing isn’t cruelty; it’s survival. The film captures that duality without flinching, showing how morality often intersects with necessity.

GOING TO THE DOGS also benefits from its deliberate pacing. At 95 minutes, it refuses the rapid-fire editing of modern documentary trends. Each conversation is given space, every face time to tell its story. The calm rhythm allows emotion to seep in gradually, giving the film’s final act — when the focus shifts toward the sport’s uncertain future — a quiet but devastating resonance. There’s no victory lap here, only reflection.

In its final stretch, the documentary poses one of its most profound questions: should some traditions be allowed to die? The answer, as Cruttwell frames it, depends on whether we value memory over progress, or compassion over nostalgia. The closing images — greyhounds sprinting through a half-empty track under flickering floodlights — capture this tension perfectly. It’s beautiful, sad, and honest, the kind of ending that lingers long after the credits roll.

What makes GOING TO THE DOGS vital viewing isn’t just its insight into a controversial sport, but its ability to look beyond it. It’s about how people hold on to what defines them, even as the world moves on. It’s a film about empathy without absolution, about listening before judging. In a media landscape driven by outrage, Cruttwell offers something rare: perspective. GOING TO THE DOGS doesn’t tell you what to believe. It shows you why belief itself can be so hard to let go of.

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[photo courtesy of PARK THE BUS, TULL STORIES]

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