I've recently been watching the Jesse Stone movies starring Tom Selleck. Besides finding the movies quite good, I have discovered a great actor - the dog (appears to be a Golden Retriever, but a large one). Jesse ends up with the dog of a murdered man in the first movie of the series. The dog is featured in all the other movies (at least up to the ones I watched).
Somehow, between the dog being well trained, the dog's natural expressions, and the great way they cut to the dog for effect at just the right times and with just the right camera angles, he is practically human. He kind of comes off, from his expressions, as a real life version of the intelligent dogs in The Far Side. Only as serious versus comedic. Anyway, I thought it was a well done use of a dog as a human analog for when Jesse, a man of few words who doesn't open up to people, is pondering his problems. Not so much in the first movie, but more so in the rest of the series.
