Luc Besson has always been a frustrating filmmaker. His early French films, 1985’s Subway, !988’s The Big Blue, and 1990’s La Femme Nikita showed a director who could combine interesting stories with inventive craftsmanship. Those works combined deep characterizations and atmosphere and shared something important to say about the worlds depicted. Although somewhat of a success, 1994’s Léon: The Professional crumbled under the weight of a silly script and an embarrassingly unhinged turn from Gary Oldman. The Fifth Element was visually stunning but, due to another awful script, overly in-your-face direction, and some truly bad performances (I’m talking to you Chris Tucker!), the film became an excruciating experience. From there, Besson’s career became littered with increasingly inept motion pictures (mostly penned by the director) that suffered from bad scripts and overly-conscious filmmaking. With his latest work, DogMan, Luc Besson has written and directed a film so utterly preposterous that it is unfathomable how anyone could bankroll such a tale.
In this mind-bogglingly stupid attempt at psychoanalytic discourse, a bizarre Caleb Landry Jones is Douglas Munrow, a paralyzed man who spends most of his time in drag (as Edith Piaf, Marlene Dietrich, and eventually, Marilyn Monroe). As he explains to a police psychiatrist (Jojo T. Gibbs), Douglas was abused by his father and abandoned by his mother as a child, After being freed from his cage, he ended up in a boys’ home, where he met Salma (Grace Palma), a woman who introduced him to performing, through the plays of William Shakespeare. In their times on stage, Douglas is in full makeup, complete with lipstick and mascara, occasionally role reversing to play the female parts, hence giving way to his feminine persona as an adult. The film’s one genuine moment is found when Douglas reunites with Salma years later. As he visits her backstage after one of her performances, the two share a sweet moment that becomes heartbreaking when the lovelorn Douglas discovers a reality he hadn’t planned for.
Douglas began taking in stray dogs (as his daddy forced him to live in the family’s backyard dog pen for a spell) and has built quite the family, sharing his dilapidated quarters in an abandoned building with his ever-growing doggy crew. Over the years he came to realize the animals could understand what he was saying and is now able to communicate with them as if he were speaking to a human. In one of many unbearingly stupid scenes, Douglas is making a cake and calls out the ingredients to his canine pals, each one going right to the item, taking it in their mouth, and bringing it to their owner.
As DogMan amps up the idiocy to astronomical levels, Douglas molds his dogs into an Ocean’s 11-styled pack of thieves who sneak into houses and seemingly understand what valuable items to steal. That’s right, these dogs take down scores like they were in a Michael Mann crime picture.
Somehow, during all of this nonsense, our criminal (not so) mastermind becomes something of an “Equalizer” type who helps people with their problems. Their payment expectation? Bring him a dog.
A run in with gangster boss El Verdugo (John Charles Aguilar) is no less ridiculous, as the character is right out of central casting and written like a cartoon. The moment where the baddie and his henchman invade Douglas’s lair is rich in stupidity, as we watch dogs set and execute traps for the bad guys.
As Douglas begins working at a drag club, the whole character becomes arbitrary and exploitative. I am sure Besson was searching for some half-assed examination of one’s true self and the disguises we wear to exist in society, but there is no meaning to any of it and his moronic screenplay sinks any deeper aspirations.
Despite the asinine dialogue he must recite about the pure souls of dogs versus corrupt humans, Caleb Landry Jones is quite interesting. Always a bit of a strange actor (he could be the Crispen Glover of his generation) Jones gives a somewhat fearless performance. The way the character is designed could lend itself to over the top histrionics, but Jones keeps it grounded, as much as he can anyway. While some of his choices and mannerisms seem a bit self-conscious, the actor is never dull and almost rises above the material.
Absurdity has its place in art. In the film world, directors such as Fellini, Buñuel and their contemporaries David Lynch and Charlie Kaufman, find something existential and oft times moving in their use of the absurd. These are filmmakers with bold visions. The problem with this film is how Besson sees it all as deadly serious and cannot find the insight to make his ludicrous premise intellectually attainable. To hear the description of the plot conjures up visions of Edward Hermann and Karen Valentine goofing their way through some Walt Disney canine comedy in the 1970s. This is silly stuff that the director tries to pass off as profound. By the time Besson’s screenplay paints Douglas as a Christ-like figure who gives himself over to suffering (complete with the character laying symbolically on the shadow of a cross, with arms outstretched), the director goes overboard with his dramatic aspirations, sinking into full-on foolishness.
It is puzzling to imagine what the hell Luc Besson was aiming for. DogMan is a serious film that is quite laughable and bizarre in all the wrong ways. With its eye-rolling premise, imbecilic script, and overall “What in the world are we seeing?” effect, this slapdash Willard wannabe is the single worst film of the director’s career.
Dogman
Written & Directed by Luc Besson
Starring Caleb Landry Jones, Jojo T. Gibbs, Christopher Denham, Grace Palma, John Charles Agular
R, 113 Minutes, Luc Besson Productions, Eurocorp, Briarcliff Entertainment
