There’s a doggy bag of takeaway in DOG, a movie whose main meal is a bubble and squeak hodge podge, but the leftovers are a nevertheless tasty, if not necessarily a treat.
Traumatised war veterans is the serious side of DOG, but the terrors of combat are sublimated to a formulaic buddy road movie, not trivialised exactly, but less tough than it could have been and for the better.
The script, from co-director and long-time Tatum Channing collaborator Reid Carolin and former soldier Brett Rodriguez, has Mr Channing playing a former Army Ranger, Jackson Briggs, charged with wrangling his mate’s murderous mutt to his funeral, a cross country trek from Oregon to the Mexican border.
Both Briggs and the adorably named dog, Lulu, are veterans of Afghanistan and both suffer post traumatic stress disorders and the underlying ripple of the film is that the government is thankful of their service but they can get lost, thank you very much.
The concussed man and the cantankerous canine have a strained relationship to begin with but slowly bond through a series of adventures and misadventures. Tantric sex therapists, psychic cannabis cultivators, luxury hotel staff and larcenous hobos all making up the rich tapestry of characters they encounter along the way.
Channing has a dippy charm and there’s no denying he has chemistry with his canine co-star(s). The drama, when it is allowed to brew and percolate, is quite affecting, while the humour is a little scatter gun, with many sequences howlingly funny, and some flat footed howlers.
Dogged by doggerel, the script lapses into laziness, but its heart is sound, and its resounding emphasis on the power of the dog as a restorative, rehabilitative and redeeming presence in the lives of broken people as a counter balance to a cruel bureaucracy and heartless government shines through.
