Directed By Reid Carolin and Channing Tatum

Starring – Channing Tatum, Q’orianka Kilcher, Emmy Raver-Lampman

The Plot – Two former Army Rangers are paired against their will on the road trip of a lifetime. Army Ranger Briggs (Tatum) and Lulu (a Belgian Malinois dog) buckle into a 1984 Ford Bronco and race down the Pacific Coast in hopes of making it to a fellow soldier’s funeral on time. Along the way, they’ll drive each other completely crazy, break a small handful of laws, narrowly evade death, and learn to let down their guards in order to have a fighting chance of finding happiness.

Rated PG-13 for adult language, thematic elements, drug content and some suggestive material

DOG | Official Trailer | MGM Studios – YouTube

POSITIVES

After a trio of script rewrites and documented studio objections, Tatum’s passion project, “Dog”, materializes with a surprising smoothness in production that sees its leading lad treading new waters creatively in the second act of his career. For a directorial debut, Tatum shows a lot of promise in the stylistic elements of production in everything from ambitious framing, glowing lens-flared presentation, and crisp editing that led to more than a few credible jolts of energy in the unpredictable capabilities of its four-legged canine consistently pushing much of the narrative forward at all times. It gives audiences plenty of visual stimulation in a film so psychologically grounded that I commend Tatum and Carolin for even attempting something riveting with the way they use each of these aspects to channel some palpable feeling permeating subliminally between their two dominant protagonists and committing themselves to elements of creative range that immerse the audience seamlessly in their traumatic enveloping. In audibility, this lends itself to the mixing of faintly foreign sounds in the context of every sequence they adorn that externally fleshes out what is internally boiling. However, what is most endearing is how its constant triggering constructs a linear link between man and dog that can be communicably felt a lot louder than words ever could, all the while feeding into the film’s eye-opening conversation piece that alludes to post-traumatic stress not just being a human familiarity. The performances are certainly charming, especially in the bravado and comedic timing of Tatum, who once again leaves no deliveries left behind during gut-busting instances of self-humility. However, the real show-stealer here is Lulu, whose expressive range affords her emotive eyes and raw energy that are almost human in their range of emotive boldness, and ones that we the audience can read and decipher seamlessly because of the continuous perfect takes she gives to a job that is anything but easy to capture, and never even remotely manipulative in the way they’re conjured up in the context of scenes they adorn.

NEGATIVES

Inescapable predictability is everywhere in a typical buddy road trip movie, where one of the characters is the objective driving the movie’s conflict. This leaves little meat of intrigue left on the bone of conventionalism, as everything important about the film is shown in its revealing trailer and made even worse by the lack of creativity in what’s left that reduce themselves to tireless cliches littered casually in the distance of the road most often traveled. In addition to this, the film feels like a tale of two halves that is tonally imbalanced from the film most prominently promised to us in the depth of the aforementioned trailer. Considering this is marketed as a gut-wrenching drama between an emerging bond in friendship, the first half of the film is anything but, instead feeling like a slapstick, unmistakable comedy right down to the sitcom style of deliveries, which are only missing laugh tracks to make everything effectively resonate all the more. This of course leads to problems when the film does eventually transition to drama with about twenty minutes left, not only because it doesn’t earn any of the heartfelt beats it reaches so candidly for, but also because the sharpness of the shift makes these feel like entirely different characters, for no other reason than a fight between them. Some scenes definitely should’ve been trimmed, while other omitted all together from the ridiculousness that ensues in such, feeling like Carolin and Tatum took the reins from a halfway finished Todd Phillips film, before he smoked enough creative inspiration to finish. Finally, the most disappointing aspect of “Dog” is in the lack of pursuit of its thought-provoking material that it only attempts at surface level. Sure, it’s clever enough to realize there is a problem, mainly in the way people view veterans, the toxicity of veterans experiencing PTSD being swept under the rug, and especially the oppression of animals being led to slaughter, but never in ways that provide something positively uplifting or mentally stimulating for the engagement or resolution that it disappointingly avoids. It cries wolf without fully committing itself to one side of the argument and disappoints in ways that could’ve made this an eye-opening surprise to veterans and non-seeking more of an introspective delve into the inescapable baggage of what comes with the territory.

OVERALL

“Dog” doesn’t quite bite with the kind of socialistic sharpness needed to attain depth in its unique perspective but does serve as a vital next step for Tatum, who delivers remarkably on and off-screen for his first time in the director’s chair. If you seek a throwaway charmingly good time with not a lot of edge, then look no further, but if you prefer a creatively balanced thought-provoking piece on soldier psychology, go fetch.

My Grade: 6/10 or C+