Review: Dog is an elegantly written film about a man, his dog and their shared war-related PTSD

4 stars

The Belgian Malinois is a beautiful breed of dog and one my partner fought very hard for when we were looking for a replacement for our two beautiful pups who died last year.

That's a dog breed you don't hear mentioned too often. We Aussies love our staffies and kelpies and our golden retrievers, but now that a Malinois is sharing lead billing with Channing Tatum in this heartstring-tugging film, I can imagine their popularity might be on the rise.

The dog of the title is Lulu, and much like the Olsen twins playing a single character in Full House, for this film Lulu is played by Britta, Lara 5 and Zuza, and between the three pups, they own this film, holding their own against Hollywood heavyweight Tatum.

Lulu is a dog trained for military work, and eight deployments to combat zones has left her with a severe case of post-traumatic stress disorder. On top of this, Lulu's handler has dealt with his own post-combat issues by driving his car into a tree and leaving her alone in the world.

Tatum plays Jackson Briggs, a veteran and former unit colleague of Lulu and her handler.

Briggs isn't coping too well with post-military life and is looking to get in good with his former commander for a reference that might get him back into the service.

The commander makes Briggs an offer - make the military look good by driving Lulu from Oregon to Arizona to the funeral of her former handler, and in exchange there might be another overseas deployment and paycheck. But the gig looks to be no picnic, with Lulu wildly uncontrollable, wearing a Hannibal Lecter muzzle and with a long car trip ahead as the dog will not fly.

Already, that's PTSD, suicide and a violent dog muzzled and restrained. This is no My Life as a Dog, no A Dog's Purpose, no Milo and Otis, no Bolt. But while some of the subject matter is strong, this is still a great family film, as long as your kids aren't wee things.

This is an elegantly and sparsely written film, told in a fairly straightforward linear fashion, about a man and his dog, even if that man and that dog are trauma survivors who can barely tolerate each other for a good chunk of the film.

Tatum is working here once again with his longtime collaborator Reid Carolin. The pair worked together to turn Tatum's early career as a stripper into box office gold when Steven Soderbergh directed their screenplay for Magic Mike.

Together they have since partnered on the Magic Mike sequel and now sharing both writing and directing credits on Dog. They know what works for their star, Tatum. A trained dancer, he is a gifted physical performer and so they have written with an emphasis on the evolving understanding between Jackson and Lulu, told through action and through nuance, rather than dialogue

Understanding Tatum's audience, they have written a comedy with pathos, and the film moves from set-up to set-up including Briggs and Lulu posing as a blind veteran and his Purple Heart-recipient seeing dog to score a free hotel room.

As directors, Tatum and Carolin do better with the emotion and the empathy than they do with the transitions from comedy to drama, but the glorious Pacific coastline they hug for half of this road movie compensates, and the eventual funeral hit all the notes you are built up to expect.

And good on them for continuing the addressing of the challenges of this latest generation of trauma-impacted veterans, human and canine. Hats off to performers Britta, Lara 5 and Zuza, - all, I am sure, are very good girls.

(In the end, we ended up getting a Doberman pup, now six months old and 28 kilos already. I am so tired.)