Writer/director Luc Besson’s latest effort focuses on the jailhouse interactions between a deranged criminal and the psychiatrist assigned to his case. Its setup draws immediate comparisons to past similar works such as The Usual Suspects, Dead Man Walking, and The Silence of the Lambs. The difference here is the lead character’s infatuation with dogs, surrounding himself with dozens of strays who assist him in his criminal acts of vengeance. No, he doesn’t have any super powers, and he definitely has no connection to Dav Pilkey’s bestselling Dog Man series of middle-grade graphic novels, but his canine companions make for a fresh angle to the plot development.
Buy DogMan Blu-rayCaleb Landry Jones stars as Douglas Munrow, a damaged criminal with a tragic past. As a boy, Douglas was regularly locked up and physically abused by his father and older brother, until the abuse culminated in a shooting that left him nearly paralyzed. With limited physical mobility and massive mental trauma, he becomes a hermit devoted to rescuing and training stray dogs to assist him in his criminal enterprises. This being Besson, he makes it even weirder by making Douglas a drag performer, regularly appearing at a local cabaret as his sole public interaction.
This film lives or dies on the strength of its lead, and Jones is fully committed to proving his worth. He vamps with the best as he inhabits Marilyn and Madonna’s pink ballgown, he gleefully toys with the psychiatrist as he doles out nuggets of his character’s backstory, and he eerily establishes the character’s antihero status as a figure worthy of equal parts pity and fear. Unfortunately, opposite Jojo T. Gibbs as the psychiatrist, he’s playing against an actress who is so stoic and disaffected she may as well be the prison wall, reacting to his stunning revelations with all the emotion of a bored barista taking an order.
While Besson has fun setting up the dogs and the drag, what’s left isn’t all that interesting. With the story told almost entirely in flashbacks, there’s little to drive tension since Douglas is already in police custody from the start. With no other compelling characters in the film, and a plot that lurches to a perfunctory conclusion rather than ever really developing, we’re left with a weird character portrait in service of little but the lead’s sizzle reel. While it’s commendable that Besson continues to craft unique projects, this one just never quite connects.
The Blu-ray is an entirely bare-bones affair offering no bonus features, no DVD, and no digital code. The film is presented in its original 2.38:1 aspect ratio, with expanded DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 soundtrack.
