‘Dog’ Review: Channing Tatum and His Four-Legged Friend Find Their Way Back

February 17, 2022

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Dog (CREDIT: Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/SMPSP/© 2022 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved)

Starring: Channing Tatum, Jane Adams, Kevin Nash, Q’orianka Kilcher, Ethan Suplee, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Bill Burr, Nicole LaLiberte, Luke Forbes, Ronnie Gene Blevins

Directors: Channing Tatum and Reid Carolin

Running Time: 90 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Veterans Struggling with Civilian Life

Release Date: February 18, 2022 (Theaters)

Dog is basically The Odyssey, but as if Odysseus’ crew were replaced by a military-trained Belgian Malinois named Lulu. She absolutely has to get to the funeral of the soldier who handled her, and Army Ranger Jackson Briggs (Channing Tatum) takes on the assignment to convince his superiors that he’s fit enough to head out on another tour of duty. So they trek down the Pacific Coast, and along the way they endure several tests of character and meet a fascinating array of folks. It’s a typical road trip buddy comedy of opposites who of course eventually realize that they’ve got more in common than they thought. They’re both experiencing PTSD after all, and they can be each other’s emotional support if they can just manage to open up.

At only an hour and a half long, you might expect Dog to have a fairly straightforward plot, but it’s actually a series of non-stop detours. As Jackson makes his first stop at a hipster bar in Portland and then finds himself in the throes of a tantric threesome, I found myself wondering what the heck was going on. That thought remained top of mind throughout, as the randomness of Jackson and Lulu’s excursions just kept pulling up. One day, they’re being held captive by a pot farmer who suspects espionage, and then soon after, Jackson’s impersonating a blind man to score a luxury hotel suite. When they end up at an encampment for unhoused people, I’m still wondering how they suddenly got to this point, but at least in this case the thematic resonance is immediately clear, considering the fate of too many veterans who are unable to find the support they need. Ultimately, much like the epics of yore, these vignettes do their best to paint a mythic panorama of the society we’re living in today.

Considering its subject matter and its pedigree, Dog has an appropriately shaggy disposition. It’s the directorial debut for both Tatum and Reid, who previously worked together on White House Down, 22 Jump Street, Logan Lucky, and both Magic Mike chapters. With this collaboration, they display plenty of empathy and patience, and in that spirit, Dog is worth warming up to. It’s not the most enthralling or life-changing experience at the multiplex today, but it’s got some tricks up its collar that can make you reconsider what it’s up to. Its happy ending is as formulaic as any platonic (pet-tonic?) rom-com in which it’s no surprise that Man and Mutt are going to fall for each other, but it’s endearing enough that you’re pleased when they do.

Dog is Recommended If You Like: Early 2010s Hipster-based comedy, A Carousel of Character Actor Cameos, Chew Toys

Grade: 3 out of 5 Dog

‘She Dies Tomorrow,’ and You Just Might, Too

August 4, 2020

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She Dies Tomorrow (CREDIT: NEON)

Starring: Kate Lyn Sheil, Jane Adams, Kentucker Audley, Chris Messina, Katie Aselton, Tunde Adebimpe

Director: Amy Seimetz

Running Time: 84 Minutes

Rating: R for Sexual and Drug-Fueled Weirdness

Release Date: July 31, 2020 (Drive-In Theaters)/August 7, 2020 (On Demand)

It’s hard to get your bearings straight when watching a movie like She Dies Tomorrow. The main characters have a profound lack of charisma, the protagonist seems to keep changing before any sort of story arc has been completed, and the tone and genre are more or less impossible to pin down. There’s an early scene in which initial protagonist Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil) plays a recording of Mozart’s Lacrimosa over and over to the point that it feels like the film is skipping and repeating. This is all part and parcel of the premise, in which people are overcome by a contagious feeling in which they are convinced that they will no longer be alive come the next day. Weirdly, this doesn’t result in despair so much as a strikingly unique form of negatively focused enrapturement.

I’ve read other reviews of She Dies Tomorrow that describe it as scary in an existential sort of way, though not really a horror movie. But I’m not sure how else to categorize it. It may not be populated by goblins or ghouls, but a persistent sense of ennui crossed with enveloping paranoia sounds to me like just about the most terrifying thing anyone could possibly conceive of. It didn’t exactly feel that way while watching it, though, at least not the whole way through. The illness at the heart of the film is so low-key that the people who aren’t yet infected with it react to those who are mostly as they would to annoying social behavior. At those moments, it feels like a purposely off-putting comedy of manners. But now that I’ve had some room to process everything, I am struck more fully by the loneliness and miscommunication infused throughout.

Director Amy Seimetz works prolifically on both sides of the camera, and she has a tendency to pop up in blockbuster fare like Alien: Covenant and more straightforward horror pics like You’re Next. The budget for She Dies Tomorrow came from the paycheck she earned for acting in last year’s Pet Sematary remake, and this is definitely the work of someone confidently following her own particular muse with the financial freedom to do so. What we’re talking about here is a creator making an appeal for human connection via cinema, and I’m willing to answer the call.

She Dies Tomorrow is Recommended If You Like: Upstream Color, Jean Paul Sartre

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Requiems