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.
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.
Rating: B-
Dog is now playing in theaters.