There are many enticing puns a film like Dogman can provoke. The waft of a “dog’s dinner” is a tempting angle to take if the film is a complete mess, and if it’s just plain poor, a reviewer could do a This is Spinal Tap-style Shark Sandwich/”Shit Sandwich” quip and go for “Dogdirt”. Maybe a fan of the film would be overjoyed to call it “the dog’s bollocks”, but Luc Besson’s fascinatingly flawed return to his roots is far too interesting to resort to cheap puns at the expense of proper analysis. Working out what does and doesn’t work about this undefinable, idiosyncratic sort-of drama is a tasty bone to chew on (argh, sorry!), especially when compared with Besson’s turbulent career up to this point.
Dogman opens with an intriguing (if overcooked) central image: a police barricade encounters a truck driven by a woman dressed as Marilyn Monroe; she is peppered with bullet holes and wearing callipers on her legs, and her cargo? Dozens of friendly pooches. Held in a cell while the law tries to figure out the context of this strange scene, a psychiatrist (Jojo T. Gibbs) is tasked with getting to the bottom of this story, and discovers Marilyn is actually drag artist Doug Munrow (Caleb Landry Jones), a nightclub sensation who has a penchant for canines and a bizarre tale to tell, involving abuse, crime, self-discovery and, of course, dogs.
It’s worth highlighting that few directors have capitalised on Caleb Landry Jones as a leading man. His on-screen presence has almost entirely been defined by dangerous sleaziness, from Antiviral to Heaven Knows What to his iconically loathsome turn in Get Out. And who can blame him for sticking with what works? His is a face that most character actors can only dream of, and his unglamorous commitment to even the skeeviest roles has paid dividends for him across a wide variety of work. Besson has seen a rare talent in him, creating an unconventionally attractive and androgynous image that gives Jones a lot to work with, and he brings a heady mix of confidence and melancholy to a slippery character that could easily fall flat as an eccentric failure.
What’s left making an impression is Jones and Jones alone. He shoulders a difficult character like a champ and relishes the opportunity to claim the spotlight entirely, showing that Brandon Cronenberg’s faith in him with Antiviral was no fluke.
While Dogman finds its heart with Jones, on the page, it is a different story. Despite some superficial resemblance to the dystopian camp of Subway, it seems Joker is the primary inspiration for Besson’s most low-key fare in decades. Doug is a character who is relentlessly beaten by the world, having a fractured relationship with his parents and a skewed, chaotic view of the world’s morality. He finds solace in painting his face and becoming someone else, and while his performances as Edith Piaf and Marlene Dietrich aren’t anywhere near comparable to your garden-variety transformation into the Clown Prince of Crime, there’s something similarly ecstatic in the way he evolves as he sheds his skin by donning a new one. Yet there’s an edgy bleakness to Doug’s backstory that is tragic without pathos, a type of graphic novel miserablism that aims for glory in its agony but ends up as rote instead. Doug is a cluttered character, and each chapter of his story explains away a disparate part of his identity that leads to Besson overegging the pudding. In trying to rationalise his bold opening images, Doug’s journey from misunderstood orphan to theatre kid to drag artist to criminal mastermind with an army of hounds at his disposal is not a smooth one, veering between tones and developments with little knock-on effect. By the time the heavily symbolic but dramatically inert ending rolls around, Doug feels less like an authentic human being and more like a Dorling Kindersly sketch with labels coming off different body parts explaining what is what and how it came to be.
Those expecting bags of Besson’s trademark action from the shotgun-toting poster are in for a shock when the majority of the runtime is dedicated to Doug’s emotive journey of self-actualisation, with one late-in-the-game shootout also functioning as a bloody Home Alone riff with a pack of dogs instead of Kevin McAllister proving to be a jarring contrast to an otherwise muted drama. Anyone also worried about Besson veering back towards the ickiness of Léon: The Professional‘s central relationship need not fear; although damning accusations and a deeply dodgy relationship with actress Maïwenn have made him a Hollywood outcast, he brings little toxicity to Dogman, leaning on LGBT stereotypes slightly but nevertheless imbuing his characters with warmth and generosity. He has taken a significant step back in his marketable slickness, however; even his work on the critically-panned and insanely expensive Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets had a kineticism to the action of its digital world, none of which is present in the very real dilapidated squats of New Jersey.
What’s left making an impression is Jones and Jones alone. He shoulders a difficult character like a champ and relishes the opportunity to claim the spotlight entirely, showing that Brandon Cronenberg’s faith in him with Antiviral was no fluke. Doug and his convoluted life feel at least watchable because of Jones’ ability to be both chameleonic and distinctly true to his own image; he gets admirably lost in the role yet retains the distinct sweet-and-sour flavour he brings to every performance. For Besson, this is otherwise an old dog performing old tricks (whoops!), working with a script that is all bark and no bite (not even sorry anymore…)
Dogman is out now on Digital Platforms & Blu-Ray from Altitude Films
Simon’s Archive – Dogman (2023)
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