amazon dog movie review

If he thought about it, Briggs ( Channing Tatum ) might believe that the injuries from his service as an Army Ranger have taken everything he had and everything he needed. But he does not think about it. Despite his doctor's warnings that he has some permanent impairment, he's determined to get back into the Rangers. Service gives him structure, purpose, fellowship, and enough adrenaline to not have to think about the many things he doesn't want to think about, including how much more there is still to lose.

Briggs needs sign-off from an officer to be readmitted to the Rangers, who call themselves "the Army's premier direct-action raid force." He has been repeatedly turned down. Finally, an officer says he will authorize Briggs' reinstatement if he will perform one task, delivering an Army dog to the funeral of a veteran who served with Briggs. The dog is Lulu, a sweet-faced Belgian Malinois who performed many brave rescue operations, but who now is so severely traumatized from being in a war zone that no one can go near her. She has sent three people to the emergency room and been deemed un-salvageable. Until the funeral, she is muzzled and on Prozac. After the funeral, she is scheduled to be put down.

Briggs, who has said he would do anything to get back into the service, does not want to do this. "You're asking me to take a dog on a plane to Arizona?" The officer responds, "I'm asking you to drive a Ranger to a funeral." The dog is too unstable to fly; indeed, Briggs is warned not to let her near any person or animal. But if Briggs can deliver Lulu with no mistakes and no trouble, he can get the approval he needs.

Of course, there will be mistakes and there will be trouble on the road from Oregon to Arizona by way of Los Angeles. There will also be connections from the past, both in person and via an extensive, heartfelt, and very detailed notebook kept by Lulu's Ranger handler.

Tatum the actor responds exceptionally well to Tatum the co-director (along with co-screenwriter Reid Carolin , both directing a feature for the first time). In his previous films, Tatum has mostly relied on his natural all-American charm, a boy-we'd-like-to-have-next-door combination of confident strength and self-deprecating humor. We have seen him unhappy and under stress but almost always as a character who keeps those feelings hidden. Here we see his range, with more vulnerability than he has shown on screen before. Briggs tries his utmost to hide his struggle from everyone, including himself. But Tatum lets us see it, without consideration for movie star vanity.

Carolin and Tatum play it safe in some other choices, though, with too many sun flares and postcard-pretty shots of the beautiful western countryside and some on-the-nose song selections for the soundtrack. We do not need to hear Kenny Rogers singing "The Gambler" again; when it comes to that song, it is time to fold ‘em. One of the stops on the road trip is in Portland, and the tired jokes about too-twee Portlandia-ness and Briggs' efforts to adapt in order to get laid wear thin fast.

What we're there to see is two wounded warriors, one human, one canine, heal each other, and that works well. There are some surprising detours along the way, with some characters more interesting than the crunchy Portlandians. The always-welcome Jane Adams brings her delicate sensibility to a character who could easily have been caricatured. Interactions with two other vets also benefit from thoughtful performances.

Both Briggs and Lulu learn that the skills they relied on in the military might need to be un-learned, or at least kept in check. Lulu knocks down a man in a hotel lobby only because he is wearing Middle Eastern robes. Briggs learns that perhaps you don't enter someone's property the way you enter enemy territory, even if you think your dog might be there. They also learn that those skills can have some value in a civilian life, as long as Briggs and Lulu learn to think differently about what they are trying to accomplish with them.

"Dog" is uneven in tone and quality but shows promise in the way Tatum and Carolin approach the story with care and heart. It leaves us optimistic for the future ahead for the wounded warriors and for the people who told their story.

Now playing in theaters.

Nell Minow is the Contributing Editor at RogerEbert.com.

Channing Tatum as Briggs
Jane Adams as Tamara
Kevin Nash as Gus
Q'orianka Kilcher as Niki
Amanda Booth as Tiffany
Aqueela Zoll as Callan
Brett Rodriguez
Reid Carolin
Channing Tatum
Leslie Jones

Cinematographer

Newton Thomas Sigel
Thomas Newman

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Dog Reviews

Channing Tatum’s Dog is too mature—in comedic material if not always in theme—to completely fit into ... [the genre] expectations [and this] is probably the best thing that can be said about the defiantly mediocre film.

Full Review | Jul 18, 2024

We haven’t seen Tatum on screen for five years and Dog quintessentially proves why we love him.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Sep 23, 2023

Channing Tatum on a road trip with a dog? What more could you ask! It could of been deeper & sure it has some weird moments but I enjoyed myself

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Dog may be unimaginative and unsurprising, but it still offers a simple, lovely story, boasting enough authenticity and genuine emotion to captivate any viewer.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Jul 25, 2023

The tone and themes are incongruent with the overall storytelling.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Nov 5, 2022

... An elegantly and sparsely written film, told in a fairly straightforward linear fashion, about a man and his dog, even if that man and that dog are trauma survivors who can barely tolerate each other for a good chunk of the film.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 28, 2022

It’s simply one of those movies that has enough heart to be entertaining in the moment, but you’ll forget about within a month. If you like Channing Tatum and cute dogs, you’ll probably enjoy it fine.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jul 26, 2022

Movie star Channing Tatum and co-director Channing Tatum are a match made in Heaven. I would’ve spent 5 hours with this movie dog.

Full Review | Jul 6, 2022

Dog mightn't convincingly teach its underlying formula new tricks, doesn't always have much bite and rarely knows what to stop shaking its tail at; however, even just for its 101 minutes, it's an easy-enough movie to sit and stay with.

Full Review | Jun 25, 2022

There's nothing particularly surprising, audacious or disruptive in Dog, yet it turns out to be a noble, simple and effective film. Yes, a crowdpleaser all the way. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 23, 2022

A film with many ideas, though instead of becoming a disparate mess, it transforms a few Hollywood clichés into an introspective, sentimental, and pleasant experience. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jun 23, 2022

Appearances can be deceiving. Dog, a wild journey, goes beyond the classic story of a protagonist and their best friend sharing emotional, funny, inspiring and life-changing adventures. [Full review in Spanish]

For canine lovers, Dog presumably will be a hit, well-intentioned message and all. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jun 23, 2022

It was like being on a cathartic road trip where somethings are familiar and predictable and other things catch you off guard.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jun 14, 2022

A moving comedy. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | May 16, 2022

Dog goes astray when it tries to nyuk it up.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 16, 2022

It is that rarest of things: A mid-budget adult drama released by a major studio that actually works, despite its reliance on formula, due to how deeply felt it is on the part of everyone involved.

Full Review | May 10, 2022

Older moviegoers have had fewer and fewer choices these days, so let me recommend this heartfelt story of two battered, bruised U.S. Army Rangers.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | May 9, 2022

Heart-warming story about how a difficult dog and a damaged war veteran transform each other.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 3, 2022

Dog is ultimately a movie about healing, about letting go and moving on; about learning to deal with the traumas of the past and the setbacks of the present.

Full Review | Apr 6, 2022

Entertainment
Channing Tatum Will Make You Believe in <i>Dog</i>

Channing Tatum Will Make You Believe in Dog

I f the devil were to arrive on Earth in human form, he wouldn’t appear as an infant born to an Upper West Side mom with a pixie cut, or even as a scheming, greedy, amoral presidential candidate. Those guises are just too obvious. He would show up as someone like Channing Tatum , an actor loved by almost everyone who has a brain and a heart, a performer who can make us believe in any script, whether it’s far-fetched, corny, or just plain dumb. Luckily, there’s no way Tatum is working for the dark side—he’s too radiant and generous a spirit for that—but his persuasiveness is devilishly effective even in movies whose charms you may try valiantly to resist. And he will make you believe in Dog .

Dog, which was co-directed by Tatum and Reid Carolin (writer of the enormously awesome Magic Mike movies ), is one of those pictures that you think you have pinned down even before you see it—and in some ways, you probably do. Tatum plays Briggs, an Army Ranger who feels completely lost when not on duty. He’s stuck making sandwiches somewhere in Montana and he’s dead broke, desperate to be redeployed. But he has suffered a serious brain injury, and the Army wants nothing to do with him. He begs the higher-ups to send him out on the next rotation; they keep refusing. But finally, to shut him up if nothing else, they give him an assignment. One of his old Ranger buddies, formerly the handler of a K9 soldier—a Belgian malinois named Lulu—has died, a suicide. The soldier’s distraught parents want Lulu at his funeral in Arizona. Can Briggs get her there?

Lulu suffers from PTSD; her anxiety manifests itself in aggression, making her unadoptable and, presumably, unlovable. She’s one of the Army’s lost causes, a casualty who has become a burden to them. Briggs accepts the mission, partly because he needs something to do, but mostly to get back in the Amy’s good graces.

Man rescues dog as dog rescues man. How many times have we seen this story? But we’ve never seen Tatum play it. Dog —which was written by Carolin and Brett Rodriguez—is largely a comedy, and only partly a tearjerker. But it earns those tears. Lulu isn’t an easy dog to like, especially at first. She’s so unpredictable that she’s doomed to wear a Bane-style leather muzzle most of the time. She goes ballistic if her ears are touched even lightly. It’s dangerous to take her out in public, and she feels a constant need to run—even though she’s long been off-duty, she’s still susceptible to every combat trigger. And the opening credits, as well as broad hints dropped here and there throughout the film, let us know that she’s been trained to attack and kill. That’s the job humans have given her and groomed her for. In a scene that doesn’t end as badly as you fear, she escapes Briggs’s grip in the lobby of a fancy hotel and attacks a doctor, a Muslim, because he’s wearing a thobe.

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‘Dog’ Review: Channing Tatum’s Directorial Debut Is a Sweet Road Trip About Two Wounded Soldiers

David ehrlich.

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A buddy comedy about the mutually life-altering friendship that forms between Channing Tatum and a Belgian Malinois during a wild road trip from Montana to Arizona, “ Dog ” is the kind of movie that will divide audiences into two uneven camps: Those surprised to discover that it’s actually good, and those disappointed to learn that it’s not astoundingly great. The first group, all of them fools, walks into this thing expecting to see a goofy jock take his “steroidal puppy” screen persona to its logical conclusion. The second group, having been sanctified by the divine light of masterpieces like “She’s the Man” and “Magic Mike XXL,” readies themselves for another chance to see one of the most unpretentious movie stars of his generation leverage his meathead physique into a perfect vessel for exploring the softer side of masculinity.

“Dog” vindicates both crowds to varying degrees, as this zany and satisfying tear-jerker is possibly the most Channing Tatum thing that anyone has ever made (he even co-directed it alongside his producing partner Reid Carolin ). Some aspects of the film reflect his limitations — the majority of them crystallize his charms. But even the movie’s wackiest and most juvenile digressions can’t disguise the fact that its bark is worse than its (very tender) bite, as the real power of this “Dog” is ultimately rooted in its star’s undying belief that a man is only as strong as the bond he shares with his best friend.

The bond that Briggs (Tatum) shares with his brothers-in-arms sure isn’t doing the trick anymore. A former Army Ranger forced to retire from active duty after sustaining a series of brain injuries (“The Army has no place for liabilities,” his ex-Captain says), Briggs is on his own at the start of this movie. Carolin’s script can be frustratingly broad when it comes to its empty shell of a hero, but the empty bottles scattered across the floor of his bedroom paint a clear enough picture, and it seems like he isn’t the only one who hasn’t been getting the support he needs from his fellow Rangers or the Army at large; his war buddy Rodriguez has just crashed his car into a tree at 120mph, and you wonder how many of the uniformed men who gather at his memorial had actually bothered to call the guy when he was in crisis. Then again, it’s unlikely that Rodriguez ever asked for help: He was a soldier, and soldiers are taught to wear a brave face no matter how much they’re hurting inside.

But Briggs doesn’t give a damn that the Army doesn’t want him anymore, or that going back on active duty might be the single worst thing he could do to quiet the ringing in his ears. He needs a family, and the only way he’s going to be allowed back in the circle is if he agrees to drive Rodriguez’s traumatized service dog — a former Army Ranger, herself — down to his funeral service in Arizona before leaving her at the military base where she’s due to be euthanized.

Will Briggs decide to save Lulu’s life? Will Lulu be able to save his in return? Will there be an absolutely demented scene that, impossible as it sounds, somehow manages to bridge the gap between “Scent of a Woman” and Samuel Fuller’s “White Dog”? The answer to all of those questions is obvious, but this sweet and semi-gentle movie takes great pleasure in the process of asking them in wildly ridiculous ways. While “Dog” is far more genial than laugh-out-loud funny — Carolin and Tatum maintain the loose comic tone of an old war story as they alternate between slapstick humor and sudden dashes of raw tension — it’s also very much a road trip movie at heart, and one that uses the genre as permission to put its characters in all sorts of wacky situations.

“Dog” makes time for all of the basic shtick you’d expect in a comedy about a large adult man chauffeuring his dead friend’s high-maintenance pet for more than 1,500 miles, and muttering to himself turns out to be one of Tatum’s many hidden talents. Still, the dynamic between Briggs and the four-legged passenger he cages up in the backseat of his 1984 Bronco is loaded from the start.

For starters, they served together. The last time Briggs saw Lulu — who’s played by very good girls Britta, Lana, and Zuza — she was mauling people half to death in one of the Middle Eastern countries that Briggs is so desperate to see again (he doesn’t seem to care which country it will be, or why American troops might be sent there). He knows to be a little scared of her, even if he’s forgotten how much she hates being touched behind the ears, but it will take him some time to recognize the pain behind Lulu’s eyes, or to see himself in the muzzled frown of a dog being left to die now that she’s no longer fit for combat. In fact, the first pit stop Briggs makes on the trip is at a firing range, where he pops off a few practice rounds without paying any mind to the fact that a single gunshot might be enough to trigger Lulu’s PTSD.

Briggs’ injuries are less defined — a symptom of his denial that positions the movie around him to let the Army off the hook — but if “Dog” shares its protagonist’s ugly indifference towards the specifics of America’s wars, it isn’t shy about the soul-poisoning cost of fighting in them. While Carolin and Tatum stop short of condemning the Army outright, they come a hell of a lot closer to it than you’d expect from a movie that opens with the strong whiff of military propaganda. It’s clear that Briggs and Lulu are both sick in their own ways, and it’s telling that even the silliest of the detours along their road trip find them running into healers of one kind or another.

A stop in Portland — a city whose crunchiness the film exaggerates to such a ridiculous degree that Fox News viewers will probably take it at face value — climaxes with Lulu cock-blocking Briggs’ very special night with a pair of sexy tantric gurus. A pit stop on the way to San Francisco leads to an ambush that threatens to send the whole movie in a much darker direction, but a sequence that starts with some genuine suspense is eventually defused in the most delightful possible way (no spoilers, but Jane Adams and WWE legend/“Magic Mike XXL” icon Kevin Nash will be tough to beat as the year’s best movie couple). Later, when Briggs poses as a blind veteran in order to snag a free room at a fancy hotel, the film’s most broadly comedic episode crashes to a halt with its most uncomfortably sobering moment, as Lulu bites a doctor in a scene that confronts a fuller range of the damage that she and Briggs have brought home with them.

It’s hard to describe these seriocomic setpieces without robbing them of their “what the hell is happening right now?” fun, but let’s just say that a movie as off the leash as “Dog” would be a total disaster if not for Tatum’s ability to maintain its tail-wagging tone. He may not push himself very hard in this role (even by the end, Briggs only amounts to a rough idea of a person), but it’s always fun to see an actor who so fully understands how to wield his own appeal.

At heart, this is a film that just wants some good pats, and it’s willing to do whatever it takes to get them. That eagerness creates an occasional clash between the yucks and the tears — as you might expect from something that marries the canine hijinks of “Turner & Hooch” with the hilarity of euthanasia, PTSD, and combat veteran suicide — and it leaves Carolin and Tatum a bit off-balance when the movie finally makes its feeble bid to flesh out Briggs’ backstory. The nice stuff is a little tense, the tense stuff is a little nice, and the waterworks at the end amount to more of a leaky faucet than a busted reservoir because of the film’s unwillingness to lean too hard in any particular direction. And yet, “Dog” builds to a surprising degree of clarity on at least one point, even if it’s argued with a non-partisan softness: These two former Army Rangers are only able to Be All They Can Be because of what they become to each other.

MGM will release “Dog” in theaters on Friday, February 18.

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‘Dog’ Review: Man and Beast Hit the Road

In his directing debut, Channing Tatum plays an Army Ranger on a healing journey with a canine comrade.

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By A.O. Scott

Road comedies that pair an animal and a movie star are a minor genre unto themselves. The best examples, in my opinion, involve Clint Eastwood and an orangutan named Clyde , though the recent one with Eastwood and a rooster wasn’t bad. Channing Tatum is a different kind of screen presence — sweeter, chattier, bulkier — and in “Dog,” which he directed with Reid Carolin, he amiably shares the screen with (spoiler alert!) a dog.

She is a Belgian Malinois named Lulu (played by three talented canines), and she has served in the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. So has Tatum’s character, Jackson Briggs, a former Army Ranger living in a cabin in the Northwest. A history of brain injuries has kept him out of action, but he hopes that a good word from his commanding officer will give him a chance to go back overseas.

To make that happen, Jackson agrees to accompany Lulu from Fort Lewis, Wash., to Nogales, Ariz. The reason for the road trip is the funeral of her handler, a Ranger whose death in a car crash haunts Jackson and the film. While “Dog” is a man-beast buddy movie, it’s also preoccupied with grief, trauma and the challenges of post-combat life. Lulu and Jackson are both wounded warriors who must learn to trust each other and help each other heal.

Though much is made of Lulu’s ferociousness, the film’s humor is gentle and mostly unthreatening. She chews up the seats in Jackson’s already battered Ford Bronco, disrupts his potential threesome with a pair of Tantra practitioners in Portland and causes an unfortunate ruckus in a San Francisco hotel. Jackson has variously awkward, hostile and touching human encounters, notably with New Age cannabis growers and a resentful, racist police officer.

“Dog” is unabashedly sentimental. A movie about a dog and a soldier could hardly be otherwise. Luckily, Tatum’s self-deprecating charm and Carolin’s script keep the story on the tolerable side of maudlin. It’s also circumspect about Lulu and Jackson’s experiences of war, which is vaguely understood as something horrible but also glorious. Neither one is as complex as a real dog or a real man would be, which makes the movie an easy watch, but at the cost of some credibility. It’s friendly and eager to please, but it won’t quite hunt.

Dog Rated PG-13. More barking than biting. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters.

An earlier version of this article misstated the state where the road trip in “Dog” begins. The starting point is in Washington, not in Oregon.

When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at [email protected] . Learn more

A.O. Scott is a co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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One of mel brooks' best movies was this '90s comedy almost no one remembers, every cormac mccarthy movie, ranked.

Dog , the first starring role for Channing Tatum since 2017, seems as deceptively simple as its one-syllable title. Co-directed by Tatum with Reid Carolin , Dog is at its core a road trip film between Tatum’s Briggs and the Belgian Malinois named Lulu, which starts with this pair unsure about each other, and with them eventually growing to love one another, as one would expect. But despite the clear direction, Dog is a surprisingly earnest look at PTSD, finding love that can get you through the worst of times, and a reminder of how great it is to have Tatum back in a lead role.

Written by Carolin and Brett Rodriguez , Dog stars Tatum as Briggs, a former Army Ranger desperate to get back to active duty after a series of brain injuries. Even though he claims to have a clean bill of health, he wakes up to a piercing ringing in his ears, and his lack of a support system looks to be breaking his spirit as he works at a gas station sandwich shop. Even worse off than Briggs in his old Army buddy Rodriguez, who died in a high-speed car crash, likely due to severe PTSD taking its toll.

In the wake of Rodriguez’s death, Briggs finds his opportunity to return to the military. Rodriguez’s service dog Lulu, who worked alongside him in Iraq, needs to be driven from Oregon to Rodriguez’s funeral in Arizona, after which, Lulu will be taken to a military base and euthanized. If Briggs can bring Lulu to Arizona in time for the funeral, he will get the chance that he’s been waiting years for.

RELATED: Channing Tatum Still Thinks 'Men In Black' / '21 Jump Street' Crossover Can Happen, Says Script Is "One of the Funniest Scripts" He's Ever Read

Dog basically hits every note that one would expect from this type of man-meets-dog story, from the uncomfortable growing period, to the pair becoming best friends. Yet it’s the tackling of the pair’s PTSD that makes this slightly more. Briggs clearly still has issues with his time in the service, despite his interest in jumping back in, but so does Lulu. Loud noises cause Lulu to bark and freak out, and her training has made her induction into the real world difficult at times. During one scene, Lulu tackles a Muslim doctor at a hotel simply because of the way he’s dressed. As Briggs has to explain, she doesn’t mean anything by this assumption, it’s just the way that she was raised in war, as terrible as that might be.

But Briggs and Lulu also served together, and while they got along during their shared time in the military, their experiences with loss and the absence of purpose has turned them both into something completely different. For Lulu, she is reckoning with the loss of her owner, while Briggs is stuck in a dead-end job, desperate to prove himself worthy of more. Yet both have seen the terrors that war can cause, and it’s their combined efforts to rise above their shared trauma that bonds them together. Yes, Dog is very much about a dog finding his master, but it’s also a quite lovely look at how love, friendship, and openness can not only alter your perception of the world, but help one rise above the pains of the past.

Considering the road trip format of Dog , the film has Briggs and Lulu engaging in a series of various adventures together, some of which are far more successful than others. One of the better segments features Tatum’s Magic Mike co-star Kevin Nash and Jane Adams as a couple who show Briggs the softer side of Lulu. The false toughness of Nash’s exterior, matched with the more free spirit mentality of Adams makes them a joy to spend time with, even for a relatively short amount of time.

The aforementioned attack of a Muslim doctor is uncomfortable, yet Carolin and Rodriguez’s script finds a way to make it work regardless. Less effective, however, is the casting of Bill Burr as a racist cop who arrests Briggs after the attack, a sequence where Tatum pretends to be blind to get a free hotel room for Lulu, or the scenes where Briggs mostly laughs off the horror of war as an almost unavoidable experience that he willingly participated in. For the most part, Dog is fairly solid at handling the awfulness of war, yet at times like these, it gets into a strange territory that doesn’t always work.

Yet for the most part, Dog is a subtlety effective film about PTSD and dealing with the aftermath of war, tucked away into a charming buddy comedy road trip. Tatum and Carolin aren’t breaking the mold with this story, but their ability to tie deeper issues into a fairly rote concept does show promise for future projects. Dog is often fun, a welcome return for Tatum, and, a mostly appealing story of a man (and a dog) finding exactly what they need to move forward.

Dog is now playing in theaters.

Movie Reviews
Channing Tatum

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User reviews

A Journey of Searching & Healing....

PerryAtTheMovies
Feb 15, 2022

At times, it's excellent

Feb 17, 2022

It's a drama, not a comedy.

Horror_Flick_Fanatic
Mar 12, 2022

Very touching movie

ilovefoodcoma

Compelling Story About Two Warriors That Rescue Each Other In Their Odyssey Of Self-Discovery

Feb 20, 2022

Darker tone than expected

Feb 23, 2022

A ex army-ranger, a dog and two cases of PTSD!

frank-liesenborgs
Mar 11, 2022

Very difficult movie to make.

javiergarcon
Sep 23, 2022

Fine, fun movie

benbearcroley

A feel-good movie!

mannywhimpey

More of a tearjerker than a comedy

UniqueParticle
Feb 18, 2022

Surprisingly, Almost a CaNine our of 10

As a 'road movie' featuring a man and a dog, this one has genuine heart. It's not gooey and gelatinous like a "Marley and Me" dog story: it actually has a moderately hard edge to it. This is helped along by Channing Tatum who delivers a really nice and believable performance as the injured vet.
Given this is the directorial debut of writer Reid Carolin and Channing Tatum (sharing the seat), it has a really nice pace to it. At 100 minutes long it doesn't outstay its welcome. And any time that the pace does slacken off, it's for meaningful relationship-building between Briggs and Lulu. (A stormy interlude in a barn is particularly engaging).
The cinematography by Newton Thomas Sigel is gorgeous, making full use of California's wonderful golden light and with some impressive drone footage along Highway 1.
Given the low-budget cast (Tatum is the only big name), they've wisely invested in a scoring master (Thomas Newman) to write the music. And its lovely: understated, but when it does come through it adds considerably to the pictures.
There's a lot of "thank you for your service" type messaging in here, which might cloy a bit with non-American audiences.
It's also worth saying that this is a 12A for a reason, and parents thinking to take little ones along to see this in half term as a 'happy clappy dog movie' might want to check the BBFC comments on their web site. I attended an afternoon showing, with a number of parents and kids in the 8 to 10 sort of age-range. The parental squirming evident during the "threesome scene" (nothing actually proceeds) was self-evident, as a portent for those questions in the car home!
bob-the-movie-man
Feb 21, 2022

Not a comedy.

chris_rowe-881-168820

A Flawed Masterpiece

danielatkins-84938

Touching Movie

lynnschwartz-74864
Nov 11, 2023

A road trip that takes Jackson Briggs on an unexpected yet worthy journeys ending

Ed-Shullivan
Jul 13, 2023

Better than expected

northernpaladin
Sep 24, 2022

Changed my mind

HumbleMensa
Aug 26, 2022

'Dog' won me over

Feb 20, 2023
PiratesRock83483
Mar 15, 2022

Important film - unfortunately not everyone will get the humor but everyone seems to get the drama

Sep 17, 2022

A bit deeper than I expected from the trailer

coombsstephen

Naming film Dog instead of Lulu disrespects all USA veterans

Jun 30, 2023

‘Dog’ review: Channing Tatum hits the road in this well-crafted comedy with teeth

Movie review.

Simple title: “Dog.”

Simple plot: road trip.

Simply put, the combination makes for a well-crafted movie.

That’s largely thanks to Channing Tatum. He’s the star, playing an Army Ranger named Jackson Briggs who’s stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. He’s also the co-director, sharing that duty with his business partner Reid Carolin, who also wrote the screenplay.

In the central role, Tatum shares the screen with the title character, a highly trained Belgian Malinois named Lulu (three dogs play the canine). The dog is a war hero who served in the Middle East with her Ranger handler Riley Rodriguez (and Briggs’ comrade in arms), who died in the line of duty. Briggs accepts an assignment to take Lulu from Washington state to Rodriguez’s home in Arizona for the fallen warrior’s funeral. He does so reluctantly.

Lulu has been traumatized by her experiences on the front lines and is skittish and snappish. And Briggs is not in very good shape himself. Frequently wounded, he’s recovering from a traumatic brain injury that has rendered him unfit for active duty. But he’s making progress, and his commanding officer tells him that if he delivers Lulu to Arizona, he’ll pull strings to have Briggs returned to his unit, good to go. So off they go in Briggs’ ’84 Ford Bronco, a wary twosome, neither of whom really wants to be around the other.

War dog movies are, of course, nothing new. Recently, there has been “Megan Leavey” released in 2017. In fact, “Dog” itself was inspired by “War Dog: A Soldier’s Best Friend,” a documentary from the same year produced by Tatum and Carolin. The difference between “Dog” and those other pictures is that it’s a comedy. Though one with teeth, to be sure.

It treads a delicate line between physical comedy and more serious concerns. There are plenty of scenes of Lulu tearing the Bronco’s seats to pieces and running away with Briggs in hot and bothered pursuit.

In the mix, too, are scenes acknowledging the price both characters have paid for their heroism: the visible wounds and the mental torments of PTSD. Civilians, Briggs remarks to Lulu, “don’t know the things you’ve done to be a hero.” He says it sardonically in response to the easy and automatic “thank you for your service” comments they hear from sympathetic but clueless non-veterans.

On their 1,500-mile journey, they encounter a pet psychic who urges Briggs to let Lulu sleep in a soft bed, for therapeutic purposes. That leads to an extended scene where Briggs dons dark glasses and picks up a white cane to feign blindness and get them a room in a luxury hotel for free. The beds sure are soft and the suite’s bathtub is much appreciated, by both. Thus he makes “thank you for your service” pay off big time. That is until Lulu is triggered by the sight of a hotel guest in Islamic garb and attacks the man. Briggs winds up in jail facing a hate-crime charge.

Along the way, homelessness is touched upon as Briggs retrieves stolen items from a thief in a homeless encampment. In the process, he realizes he could have ended up in such a place had things turned out differently for him. A companion scene finds him looking wistfully through the window of a veteran dog handler, seeing his friend happily at home with wife and kids. That, too, is a possible path for him.

Through it all, Tatum balances exasperation, an easygoing lightheartedness and a deep empathy for his character’s and Lulu’s inner turmoil. His command of the role and his confident direction of the picture make “Dog” a very engaging experience.

With Channing Tatum, Jane Adams, Kevin Nash, Q’orianka Kilcher, Ethan Suplee. Directed by Tatum and Reid Carolin, from a screenplay by Carolin. 101 minutes. Rated PG-13 for language, thematic elements, drug content and some suggestive material. Opens Thursday, Feb. 17, at multiple theaters.

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The opinions expressed in reader comments are those of the author only and do not reflect the opinions of The Seattle Times.

IMAGES

Dog (2022)
The Best Dog Movies on Amazon Prime
The Best Dog Movies on Amazon Prime
10 best dog movies on Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Disney+ Hotstar to
9 Best Movies About Dogs Available on Amazon Video Right Now
Sundance Review: 'Wiener-Dog' Isn't Charming, But Craig Robinson Is

COMMENTS

Dog movie review & film summary (2022) | Roger Ebert
The dog is Lulu, a sweet-faced Belgian Malinois who performed many brave rescue operations, but who now is so severely traumatized from being in a war zone that no one can go near her. She has sent three people to the emergency room and been deemed un-salvageable.
Dog (2022) - Rotten Tomatoes
Army Ranger Briggs (Channing Tatum) and Lulu (a Belgian Malinois dog) buckle into a 1984 Ford Bronco and race down the Pacific Coast in hopes of making it to a fellow soldier's funeral on time.
Dog - Movie Reviews - Rotten Tomatoes
Dog, a wild journey, goes beyond the classic story of a protagonist and their best friend sharing emotional, funny, inspiring and life-changing adventures. [Full review in Spanish]
'Dog' Makes a Fine Showcase for the Eternally Likable ... - TIME
Dog—which was written by Carolin and Brett Rodriguez—is largely a comedy, and only partly a tearjerker. But it earns those tears. Lulu isn’t an easy dog to like, especially at first.
‘Dog’ Review: Channing Tatum’s Directorial Debut Is a Sweet ...
A buddy comedy about the mutually life-altering friendship that forms between Channing Tatum and a Belgian Malinois during a wild road trip from Montana to Arizona, “Dog” is the kind of movie ...
‘Dog’ Review: Man and Beast Hit the Road - The New York Times
While “Dog” is a man-beast buddy movie, it’s also preoccupied with grief, trauma and the challenges of post-combat life. Lulu and Jackson are both wounded warriors who must learn to trust ...
Dog (2022) - IMDb
Dog. Two hard-charging former Army Rangers paired against their will, Briggs and a Belgian Malinois named Lulu, race down the Pacific Coast in hopes of making it to a fellow soldier's funeral on time.
Dog Movie Review: Channing Tatum With a Dog Is as Charming as ...
'Dog' is a charming road trip tale between man and dog that is also the welcome return of Channing Tatum. Tatum's first starring role in five years, and first film as director is a fun road...
Dog (2022) - Dog (2022) - User Reviews - IMDb
Dog is a thought-provoking film about an important subject. This movie tells a compelling story about a former Army Ranger and his journey to bring a canine hero to the funeral of his previous comrade and handler. In the end, the two warriors rescue each other in their odyssey of self-discovery.
‘Dog’ review: Channing Tatum hits the road in this well ...
Simple title: “Dog.” Simple plot: road trip. Simply put, the combination makes for a well-crafted movie. That’s largely thanks to Channing Tatum. He’s the star, playing an Army Ranger named...