MOVIE REVIEW – In the latest film from the creators of Magic Mike, Briggs, a hedonistic ex-soldier who is always looking for a fight, is about to embark on perhaps the most crucial mission of his life. He must set out with Lulu, a Belgian shepherd dog, to make it to his owner’s funeral – Briggs’ best friend – who died in action.

Channing Tatum hasn’t appeared in a significant film in five years, and, although he is a fan of women, he has rarely found a main female partner on the screen. That’s finally changed, as the Magic Mike, 21 Jump Street and Dear John star has finally found a female lead who has been matching him step for step. But she’s not on two legs, she’s on four: we are talking about a Belgian Malinois female dog, who, like Briggs, is a PTSD-afflicted military dog who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Road to the funeral of the former dog owner

In this road movie, the task that falls to wounded military ranger Jackson Briggs, played by Tatum, is to accompany Lulu to the funeral of his former master, who was also Briggs’ best friend. The dog-hating Briggs is not happy about the 1,500-mile drive from Fort Lewis, Washington, to Nogales, Arizona, to take Lulu in his beat-up ’84 Ford Bronco, but he has his reasons for taking on the task.

Briggs and Lulu are literally two walking wounded warriors who want to prove they still have what it takes to fight and live. First and foremost, Briggs must convince his commander that he’s fit for re-deployment after a seizure-inducing brain injury sustained in combat. And while a bloody war is raging in Ukraine, the film makes you think about the horrors of war that both bipeds and quadrupeds have to endure.

Based on an HBO documentary about dogs

Tatum co-directed “The Dog” with his “Magic Mike” partner Reid Carolin, based Carolin’s fictional screenplay on a 2017 HBO documentary, “War Dog: A Soldier’s Best Friend,” which they co-produced. Even if “Dog” comes dangerously close to sinking into sentimental quicksand, the film is arguably a labour of love.

Briggs at first tries to resist Lulu, who is having tantrums. She tears up the seats of Briggs’ car at the slightest provocation and interrupts his love life when an ‘other’ woman gets too close. But as in all buddy movies with dogs and road movies, the man and the (muzzled) dog eventually grow fond of each other during their adventures together.

The dogs deserve a gold star

The episodically structured plot is sometimes funny, sometimes touching and always human: Briggs meets a pot farmer, a racist cop, a pet psychic, two sex therapists and an anti-militarist who calls the soldier a tool of oil extraction. Briggs and Lulu’s own story is integrated into the complex plot, which is the central focus of the film.

It took three dogs to play Lulu, and all three dogs deserved an Oscar for dogs with golden bones. Tatum only had to play himself as Briggs, and he did it routinely, with his usual charm, humour and seriousness – appropriate to the scene. No wonder Lulu adores him.

Tatum also cast his own former dog in the film

By the way, Dog is a personal project for Tatum, who named Lulu after his own deceased dog (with whom they lived together for the last ten years), and he clearly empathises with the human and K-9 warriors who are trained to attack and kill, only to be left to their own devices to adapt to a world full of conflict. For Lulu, for example, thunder may sound like the bombs from which she once had to flee. On the other hand, Briggs is trying to escape back to war and military service because civilian life is even more alarming to him.

The great virtue of The Soldier’s Log is that, in addition to the war thread, Tatum refuses to preach politics or anti-war in the film, which would compromise its appeal. This would have stretched the boundaries of this doggy, essentially a family film about the story of two veterans: a man and his dog and their complicated love for each other. If you like this kind of film, then Dog will not disappoint.

-BadSector-