Directed By Ridley Scott

Starring – Jacob Elordi, Margaret Qualley, Josh Brolin

The Plot – Set in a post-apocalyptic world in which a virus has wiped out most of humanity, with survivors being terrorized by roaming scavengers called “Reapers.” The protagonist is Hig (Elordi), a pilot who survived the flu that killed everyone he knew, his wife included. He lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, his only neighbor a gun-toting ex-Marine (Brolin). When a random transmission somehow beams through his radio, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life might exist if he flies a bit further. He risks it all. to chase a possible haven in Grand Junction.

Rated R for strong violence and adult language

The Dog Stars | Official Trailer | In Theaters August 28

POSITIVES

During his prime, Ridley Scott was considered one of the most prolific filmmakers in crafting the kind of genre-absorbing world-building that forever changed the landscape of science fiction and historical epics, and while Scott’s recent work over the last decade has been inconsistent at best, ranging from the lows of House of Gucci, to the highs of The Last Duel, he’s still one of the very best at captivating an audience with mesmerizing photography and a unique visual style that play exceptionally to the theatrical experience. Say what you will about the limitations of Scott’s direction in a project held hostage by an unambitious screenplay, but his articulated scope and scale in a variety of angles, suspenseful urgency in physical conflicts, as well as breathtaking scenery ushered in from cinematographer, Erik Messerschmidt, offers a lot of stimulating substance in the ways that the movie is artistically executed, commanding so much intoxicating radiance to help override some of the movie’s more glaring issues. Messerschmidt’s unforeseen radiant beauty of intoxicating landscapes feels refreshingly unique to post-apocalyptic settings, where much of the visual evidence conjured from the movie’s presentation conveys the escapism that is caught in the balance in a world still reeling from disaster, and considering the entirety of the movie is shot in and along the Colorado mountainsides, the defining isolation factor of the characters truly feels effortless, where the crippling silence of tranquility can sometimes serve as the calm before the storm. Aside from endearing imagery, the film is also elevated by a couple of meaningful performances in the work of Jacob Elordi and Josh Brolin, whose emotional and psychological differences carve out the metaphysical tug-of-war that is taking shape as a result of each of their characters being products of their environment. For Elordi’s very first lead turn, he’s not exactly given the best material to flesh out his emotionally vulnerable state of mind, but Jacob does an effective job at not only maintaining this undefined weight that hangs heavily on his Herculean frame, but also the tender kind of sensitivity that is sure to make the female moviegoers in the audience swoon with empathetic endearment, inevitably cementing him for much bigger and rewarding opportunities down the line. As for Brolin, he’s typically kind of relegated to the movie’s comedic muscle while enacting such an unforgiving character who is always on the defensive towards outsiders, however Brolin’s radiant charisma and physical resiliency are vital in articulating the ferocity of his character’s design, without anything that makes him feel naive or irresponsible in the air of his meticulous actions, leaving me wishing that the movie centered more around his character, particularly after he’s solely responsible for carrying the movie’s most riveting sequence. Lastly, on the technical front, composer Harry Gregson-Williams pitches perfection in his underlining of western tones amidst the rocky mountain setting, offering ample amounts of stirring soul and sentimentality to intentionally lingering photography that a lot of the time resides within the interpretation of its characters. Harry incorporates plenty of acoustic instruments to his versatile compositions, providing the film with a quietly introspective tone that revels in the remorse of its dramatic material, without meandering on the integrity of the experience in ways that are melodramatic, and with the music maintaining resonance over the somberly mellow atmosphere of Scott’s direction, the composer is able to dig deepest in unrooting some of his darkest and deepest themes to date, proving so much lingering psychology from a past world that now feels unrecognizable to its characters.

NEGATIVES

Adapting from a novel is already a difficult enough task in the preconceived expectations of its reading audience, however the highly derivative and repetitive script here makes more than enough questionable actions in the extent of its own material, cementing a dull and mostly uneventful experience that somehow gets worse once the story stumblingly saunters past its initial set-up. Being that this is a story set in a post-apocalyptic landscape, where a man and his dog go into town daily to gather supplies and evade the dangerous, the comparisons to I Am Legend feel inescapable, especially considering the movie lacks even tiniest increments of originality to keep from standing-out on its own terms, especially considering much of the movie’s first hour is relegated to Hig loading things up for his various excursions, only to return home and debate with Brolin’s character about pursuing something more to their monotonously isolated surroundings. If the objective to the script was to convey the boredom factor of a world devastated by change, then they remarkably succeeded, as much of the movie’s first half is not only a sluggishly sedated experience, constricted by minimalized characterization and razor thin world-building, but also depleted by a complete lack of awareness of the assorted cliches of its own subgenre, which makes a lot of the material feel like reheated leftovers that go down unfulfilling. Part of the problem certainly stems from the movie emanating from such an unidentifiable protagonist in Hig, where even with the advantage of periodic flashbacks into his past life alongside his ailing wife and young dog, there’s very little substance uncovered to justify hijacking the focus away from the foreground of the narrative, and considering the script exploits this less and less the longer the film persists, there’s very little emphasized importance of why we should even care in the first place, in turn zapping away any semblance of emotional underlining that could properly gauge the tragic elements of this story. This is echoed by the undefined details surrounding the virus and army of aggressive antagonists, who are given nothing in the way of meaningful development, with the latter feeling closer to destructive teens laced with too much Mountain Dew, instead of relentless zombies who can’t be reasoned with. Even when the script does take some chances during the second half, such as one strangely surreal scene of the Grand Junction arrival unloading some sharp tonal-shifts to the movie’s integrity, the conflicts never feel like anything monumental towards testing the urgency or vulnerability of its characters, in turn leading to such an underwhelming climax and agonizingly prolonged ending, which doesn’t feel all together confident in where to leave our characters. If this wasn’t enough, the script is also responsible for such an unappealing and aggressively vulgar kind of dialogue that left me at a grave distance in my unattainable investment to these characters, with lines so artificially inauthentic to the deliveries of these particular characters that you can practically smell the ink from which they spawned from. Sometimes it pertains to egregious uses of the F-bomb, which are neither emotionally or expressively justified in the complexion of the conversation that they emanate from, while others utilize a deep spiritual profoundness, such as “We all need something to haunt us, that hits just as deep as a Calvin Klein cologne commercial. Having never read the novel from which the movie is based on, I can’t exactly comment on the consistency from page to screen, but I can say that so little about these conversations attain with them a spontaneity that could keep their objective intentions feeling transparent long before we’ve actually experienced them, and it makes so many of the unmemorable performances from this talented ensemble feel burdened by the uphill climb of delivering the kind of tacky dialogue that can be found in Young Adult novels. Speaking of the inferior side of the performances, while Elordi and Brolin find enough charming cadence and meaning in the material to surmise commendable turns from each, Margaret Qualley, Benedict Wong, and Allison Janney are unforgivably wasted, especially Wong, who is relegated to the kind of background fluff that could literally be played by anyone. Qualley and Janney’s cases are much more detrimental to the movie’s cause, especially Qualley, who fails to generate any radiant charisma or compelling chemistry alongside Elordi, to fool us into their kinetic spark being anything other than physical, and while Janney is relegated to the aforementioned ridiculous third act set piece, she brings the kind of unrestrained intensity for scenery-chewing influence that garners no shortage of unintentional laughter from me, cementing an off-the-wall bonkers kind of performance that I didn’t previously deem her capable of.

OVERALL
The Dog Stars is a derivatively bland and sluggish slog of a dystopian thriller that might desire to be a contemplative drama about the resiliency and remarkability of human connection in desolately dire times, but expressively isn’t committed enough to compromise the thin characterization and non-existent world-building from a stagnant screenplay, that come to ultimately define it. Despite some stunning scenery and staging from afar, the movie’s lack of creative and contemplative ambition keep it from treading new ground in an overly repetitive subgenre, squandering a decorated ensemble and emotional core in ways that are anything but legend

My Grade: 4.8 or D