Having been hypnotized by Caleb Landry Jones as a mass murderer in the 2021 Australian feature Nitram, I passed over the fact that this similarly themed movie was written and directed by Luc Besson and gave it a whirl since Jones played the lead character, a disabled, gender-fluid individual who communes with dogs on an almost telepathic level for gore and profit. And, yes, Jones is worth seeing in a role that was obviously inspired by Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker, but Besson can’t help being Besson and the overall story and vibe are such a mishmash of twisted-talent cliches and calculated self-pity that it makes Joker look like the highbrow character study it thought it was. Whatever one thinks of early hits like Leon and The Fifth Element, Besson’s misguided attempts to appropriate Hollywood excess to further the cause of Euro-pop cinema has always felt immature and crass.

Jones’s character, Doug, is an emotionally damaged autodidact who survived a horrible childhood in a New Jersey home full of Bible-thumping fanatics with a paterfamilias who trains fighting dogs. Having lived in a cage with the animals for much of his boyhood, Doug lost the use of his legs but got the bloody revenge he needed and in the process became man’s best friend’s best friend. His adolescence is spent in a juvenile facility where he forms a crush on a theater teacher (Grace Palma) who turns him on to Shakespeare and provokes an interest in cross-dressing, a predilection that later helps him secure the only work that will have him, lip-syncing to Piaf and Dietrich recordings in a drag club. Meanwhile, Doug uses his canine gang to filch jewelry and other valuables from rich bastards’ and bitches’ homes and occasionally disembowel bullies.

The entire movie is told in episodic flashback mode after Doug, dressed in a bloody shift and wig, is picked up by the police with dozens of dogs in a van. His languorous confession is eventually taken by a psychiatric case worker (Jojo T. Gibbs) brought in to make some sense of this uncooperative mope, and he obliges her by relating the aforementioned big fish tale. Though the climax, which involves Doug’s maze-like, makeshift kennel being invaded by a gang of thugs with a bone to pick, shows a certain flair for choreographed retribution mayhem, it’s as silly as the rest of the movie to no great purpose except to make the audience think they didn’t waste all their money. I might be tempted to see the movie again just to concentrate on Jones’s fully inhabited Kier/Kinski-esque performance. He makes the most of those closeups.

Now playing in Tokyo at Marunouchi Piccadilly (050-6875-0075), Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955).

Dogman home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 – LBP – EuropaCorp – TF1 Films Production