Dogman is directed by Luc Besson who has directed Lucy (2014), Léon: The Professional (1994), The Family (2013), The Fifth Element (1997), Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) and a few others.
As strange as the premise of Dogman might be it strangely almost works, unfortunately this is yet another one of Luc Besson’s misfires that doesn’t quite live up to the potential that the movie had. Caleb Landry Jones is what makes this movie at the very least stand on it’s legs, he gives a pretty twisted and intimidating performance as Doug Munrow a man who is being interrogated by a psychiatrist (played by Jojo T. Gibbs) he gives his backstory when he was a child, why he became obsessed with dogs and tells a lot more about his life such as him being a drag queen in a cabaret act.
The first act and even some of the second act are quite decent I must say, Caleb Landry Jones as I said before gives a very solid performance and the backstory of Doug is actually pretty interesting. The score is quite nice (might be my favorite thing about it outside of Jones’s performance) and the trained dogs are quite impressive as well especially combined with the shots of the dogs doing some quite impressive tricks and perfectly matching each of the movie’s scenes tone.
Unfortunately the rest of the movie takes itself way too seriously and ultimately turns into another version of The Joker (2019) and Taxi Driver (1976) the third act is very rushed and has trouble really blending it’s themes together to create something interesting. There are some decent enough kills but the group Doug ultimately goes against are completely bland and have very little character to them outside of wanting to kill Doug.
There is definitely something interesting here with Dogman and I think if the writing had more work on it this could have at the very least been a decently fun movie.
Dogman is available on all VOD Platforms.
4/10 D+
Jerome Reviews... 