BEFORE: Well, at one point this was going to be my Memorial Day film, and who's to say if I made the right choice, swapping in "Top Gun: Maverick" instead? Either one probably would have worked out - but then this put both films into the chain, now it's kind of hard to switch gears and save this one for next year, when there's no guarantee that I'll be able to circle back to this one then. So, it remains part of the chain...
Channing Tatum carries over again from "Side Effects".
THE PLOT: Two former Army Rangers are paired against their will on the road trip of a lifetime. Briggs and Lulu (a Belgian Malinois) race down the Pacific Coast to get to a fellow soldier's funeral on time.
AFTER: OK, so this is not like "Top Gun: Maverick" at all - that film had a big, important military mission, and this one's just about a veteran delivering a dog to an Army funeral. But oddly, this film resembles another recently-watched film, "News of the World", only that film was about a Civil War veteran, and he was escorting a girl raised by Native Americans, not a dog, but essentially both films are the same. There's a distance to be covered, there are obstacles along the way, and the two protagonists have a meeting of the minds and grow accustomed to each other, forming a new family unit by the end.
I described the film to my wife today as we were driving to Massachusetts - I only had to describe the first half, really, and she correctly predicted the ending, so I guess really there were no surprises here. Not if you've seen a movie before, that is. On the one hand, no new ground was really broken here, but then on the other hand, if feels like a very classic tale. The new angle is the PTSD that both the soldier and the dog suffer from, and it doesn't really unite them as quickly as you might think, but since they're more alike than different, they're sort of destined to help each other.
At the start of the film, Jackson Briggs is desperate to get back into rotation and serve in...Pakistan, is it? But he's suffered some head trauma in the past and takes medication for migraines - still, he's hoping to get a clean bill of health so he can do another tour. This should be the classic "Catch-22" situation where he needs to prove that he's mentally fit to serve, however if he wants to serve, isn't that proof, on some level, that he's not mentally fit? Just saying... But he makes a deal with his unit's captain, if he can deliver his squad's dog to the funeral of the dog's trainer, then he can get a recommendation to serve again, and stop making sandwiches for a living.. And one more thing, after the funeral his instructions are to deliver the dog to another facility, where she'll be euthanized.
I'm honestly not sure whether the army would just destroy an asset that they created and trained, it seems like a waste of materials, and obviously there's an adoption program for some dogs that bond with soldiers, but I'm not in a position to say for sure that they all get adopted or get to live out their full lives, who knows? Can the U.S. Army be that heartless, to kill service dogs once they get old or start showing signs of PTSD? I just want to know, or then again, maybe I don't.
But what this film lacks in the originality department is more than made up for with all of the feels, from overall caring about pets and the bond they have with their humans to a military funeral where the dog's actions will bring a tear to your eye. If you could watch this without tearing up, don't even talk to me about it.
Also starring Jane Adams (last seen in "Brigsby Bear"), Kevin Nash (last seen in "John Wick"), Q'orianka Kilcher (last seen in "The Vault"), Ethan Suplee (last seen in "Walk of Shame"), Emmy Raver-Lampman, Nicole LaLiberte (last seen in "In a World..."), Luke Forbes, Ronnie Gene Blevins (last seen in "Death Wish"), Aqueela Zoll (last seen in "Fighting With My Family"), Junes Zahdi, Amanda Booth, Cayden Boyd, Bill Burr (last seen in "The Guilty"), Devin White, Luke Jones, Skyler Joy (last seen in "Ma"), Cole Walliser, Tory Freeth, Patricia Isaac, Timothy Eulich (last seen in "Everything Everywhere All At Once"), Joy Sunday, Terri Hoyos, Rene Raymond Rivera (last seen in "Disturbia"), Vincent Puente, Eric Urbiztondo, Zan Gomes-Headley, Lorraine Lerner.
RATING: 6 out of 10 shooting range targets
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