Note the title: This is not Richard Gere’s story. Nor is it the story of director Lasse Hallstrom (who had his 1985 breakthrough, let’s remember, with My Life as a Dog). No, this is Hachi’s story–the adorable Japanese-raised Akita who mysteriously lands at a commuter rail station somewhere outside New York, then is adopted by a kindly professor (Gere). After so many recent talking-dog movies, with their creepy CG-animated lips, it’s a bit of a shock to encounter a picture that treats its themes so simply: grief, canine loyalty, the changing of the seasons and generations, and death. If that sound a little foreign, that’s because Hachi is a remake of a 1987 Japanese hit, itself based a true story from the 1920s. Dog Hachi–also called Hachik?–has no superpowers, though Hallstrom gives him many reaction shots, flashbacks, and POV shots. He’s an instrument of healing (allusions are made to Gere and Joan Allen’s dead son), but hardly magical. Mystical is more like it: The dog’s name, Gere’s Japanese university colleague tells him, has a “spiritual significance reaching up to heaven and touching down to Earth.” Something of a Shinto fable, Hachi is deeply sentimental, but not in our accustomed sense of gushing tears, swelling music, and forgiving hugs. The Swedish-born Hallstrom and Buddhist Gere respect their source material too much to cute it up. Look elsewhere if you want catharsis or golden retrievers. And even those who feel unmoved by the canine drama will agree that Hachi is a very good boy.Hachi: A Dog’s Story Cinerama, 6:30 p.m. Sat., June 13 and 12 p.m. Sun., June 14.