‘Dog’ Review: A Narratively Messy and Tonally Uneven Directorial Debut for Channing Tatum

If you’ve seen the trailer for the new Channing Tatum vehicle “Dog” – and if you’ve been in a movie theater over the past couple of months, you probably have – you might think you know what to expect: a big lug and a tough dog have a bunch of wacky road trip adventures, softening up to each other along the way. So it might surprise you to learn that the scene of a kind-hearted woman showing our hero how to be affectionate to the canine is carefully cut so as not to reveal that our hero is literally wielding an axe. And it might further surprise you to learn that in that big set piece where Tatum pretends to be blind so he can score a free room in a fancy hotel, his “seeing eye dog” breaks away from him and blows his cover not out of sheer misbehavior, but because the dog is chasing down a Middle Eastern man because that’s who he’s been trained to attack. So his wild-eyed “I can see” punchline doesn’t really land!

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It’s one of the oddest advertising bait-and-switches this side of A24 because “Dog” is… well, I’ve seen it, and I’m still not entirely sure. Is it a buddy movie? A wacky dog comedy? A road trip adventure? A jingoistic flag-waver? A weirdly dour examination of the wounds of war? A little bit of all of it? What is this tone? What is this movie?

The plot is simple enough. Tatum plays Briggs, a former Army Ranger who’s been out of the game for three years after being “flagged for TBIs” – brain injuries, basically, though he now boasts of a “clean medical,” even though he’s on pills for panic attacks and regularly wakes up on the floor in a fit of anxiety. He’s trying to get back in the Ranger rotation, to little avail, until his old captain makes him a proposition. One of his old buddies died in a car accident, leaving behind his combat dog, Lulu. The family funeral is Sunday, and “she’s the guest of honor,” but she won’t fly. So they need someone to drive 1500 miles, from Washington state to Arizona, with a dog who’s got “every combat trigger in the book.” If he does it, they’ll put him back in the rotation.

The script is by Reid Carolin, who penned Tatum’s “Magic Mike” and “Magic Mike XXL” and co-directs with the star (the first time for each); Carolin shares story credit with Brett Rodriguez, and all three men were producers of the related HBO documentary “War Dog: A Soldier’s Best Friend.” To call Carolin’s screenplay formulaic is an act of generosity; we can safely guess, even without seeing those ubiquitous trailers, that the snapping suspicion and misunderstandings that initially define the relationship will turn into grudging respect and then affection. We can assume that various travel troubles will befall them, but they’ll make it to the destination just in time. And when we find out that Lulu is scheduled to be “put down” after this one last job, well, we can safely bet that they’re not going to end a studio movie like that in the year 2022. 

The whole thing feels calculated, an assemblage of recycled parts: the “tough guy character softened up by a slobbering dog” construct of “K-9” or “Turner and Hooch” (and their miscellaneous sequels and spin-offs); the “tough guy actor softened up for family entertainment” formula of “Kindergarten Cop” or “The Pacifier” or “Tooth Fairy”; the canine-ized reworking of the essential story points of “Midnight Run” (complete with a stopover attempt to reconcile with his abandoned family). The trouble with plugging Tatum into a “soften up the tough guy” picture is that he’s never been one of those guys – he’s always been softer and more self-aware than a Schwarzenegger or Diesel or Rock/Johnson. But he’s also not an overtly comic personality like “K-9”’s Jim Belushior “Turner and Hooch”’s Tom Hanks, though he does do the necessary comic exasperation well (“You’re just a demon. YOU’RE JUST A DEMON! All right, last chance to apologize”).

And as for “Midnight Run,” well, there’s the question of tone. There’s no real dramatic tension because the complications are never more than temporary hiccups, and there’s no comic energy since it’s all set-ups and no pay-offs. It’s jagged and frankly jarring. There’s something gross and pandering in its romanticizing of the military and its hoo-ha masculinity as if Tatum and Carolin are overtly playing for the flag-waving audience that made the likes of “Lone Survivor” and “American Sniper” such hits. There are country music needle drops a-plenty, and an ugly sequence of Briggs trying to get laid in a Portland bar and coming up against a bunch of shrill feminists who (accurately) pinpoint his toxic masculinity and white savior complex – but it’s played for “look at these woke bimbos” laughs. The entire sequence is hard to reconcile to a director/star who boasts (perhaps fallaciously) about reading Roxane Gay.

All of that said, “Dog” is not (sorry) a total dog (I’m so sorry). It proves an unsurprisingly effective showcase for Tatum’s meathead charisma and natural grace, and to his credit, he nails the desperation of this guy – being a soldier is all he’s ever known and all he knows how to be. It’s a pleasure to see Ethan Suplee pop up in a late (and well played) supporting role. And they get some very good stuff with the dog, including some emotional beats near the end that genuinely land, manipulative though they may be. Thomas Newman’s score is evocative, even if he’s riffing on familiar themes, and Newton Thomas Sigel’s cinematography is lovely, in that very specific sunsets-on-a-road-trip fashion you’d expect. 

But it’s all so deeply confused, particularly in its ill-advised attempts to dive into serious territory about war and service and PTSD, which there just isn’t enough of a foundation here to support. As novice directors, Tatum and Carolin might have been capable of the light, personality-driven fluff the trailer promises, but not, ultimately, whatever the hell “Dog” is trying to deliver. [C-]