Luc Besson's 'DogMan' Is Some Weird Sh*t

The movie is about a paraplegic drag queen who runs a canine gang of burglars. It may or may not be a comedy.

The plot of DogMan follows a paraplegic drag queen who runs a canine gang of burglars, like Fagan from Oliver Twist, only with dogs. It includes horrific child abuse, an abundance of Catholic symbolism, the suggestion of a psychic link between humans and animals, and a wealth of Edith Piaf songs.

How seriously are we meant to take this movie?

I haven’t the foggiest.

Set in an unspecified era that both does and does not appear to be the present day, DogMan begins with its protagonist, Douglas Munrow (Caleb Landry Jones), being arrested on charges of driving around with too many dogs while dressed as Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. In jail, he’s interviewed by a criminal psychologist, Evelyn (Jojo T. Gibbs), who takes a special interest in him because he was driving around with too many dogs while dressed as Marilyn freakin’ Monroe.

These interviews couch the flashbacks which make up the bulk of the film. We learn that Douglas comes from an abusive redneck family (his brother, I kid you not, looks like Simple Jack) and spent part of his childhood living in an outdoor pen with animals intended for dog fights. The movie suggests, but never confirms, that during this time, Douglas developed the ability to communicate with his new four-legged friends via telepathy. This skill enables Douglas to escape his family and find his way into a home for troubled youths, where he learns the joys of acting.

As an adult, Douglas first runs a dog shelter, and then, when that’s shut down and he’s unable to find work, takes work as an Edith Piaf-themed drag performer; he also begins to dispatch his dogs into wealthy homes, where they’re able to sneak past various security systems and retrieve valuables on Douglas’ behalf. That puts him in the sights of a police detective (Christopher Denham) who has wandered in from an Elmore Leonard adaptation. Douglas, however, is more Robin Hood than Catwoman, and thus also uses his dogs to protect the local denizens from evildoers; as a consequence, he runs afoul of El Verdugo (John Charles Aguilar), a gangster shaking those denizens down for protection money.

If that sounds like a lot of disparate elements to pack into a single two-hour movie, that’s because it is. DogMan comes from writer/director Luc Besson, best known as the mastermind behind action movies like La Femme Nikita, Léon (a.k.a. The Professional), and The Fifth Element (he also co-wrote and produced the Taken and Transporter franchises). But DogMan isn’t an action movie, even if it has some elements of an action movie. And even though the reliably-intense Jones gives a deeply committed performance, and the film liberally “borrows” from Hildur Guðnadóttir’s incredible score for 2019’s Joker, DogMan isn’t exactly a probing character study or condemnation of modern society, either. Nor is DogMan as deliberately-campy as a John Waters movie or satirically arch as a Paul Verhoeven picture, although it’s impossible to imagine Besson having no awareness that slow-motion shots of adorable dogs happily attacking terrified gangbangers is inherently goofy.

There’s a scene that amounts to one character saying “Lassie, go get help!”, Lassie going to get help, and the person Lassie goes to get saying “Hey, I think that dog is trying to tell us something!”, and it’s played completely straight; there’s also a scene where a bad guy sits between two pillows on a couch and quickly realizes they’re not pillows but attack dogs. And I’m not sure if Besson thinks he’s being clever or silly by naming the protagonist of DogMan “DOUGlas MUNrow.”

In case it isn’t clear, I found DogMan to kind of baffling in general.

And yet, I didn’t hate it. There’s something pleasurable about watching a filmmaker take a big swing like this, even if they ultimately strike out. Whatever else you can say about DogMan, you can’t say you’ve ever seen a movie quite like it before.

In fact, while its tonal whiplash is certainly a big problem, I take greater issue with DogMan’s structural construction. There’s an episodic quality to the movie that not only further adds to the overall tonal disconnect, but robs the narrative of momentum and meaning. Douglas neither learns nor fails to learn anything in the course of the story; the movie has no emotional or intellectual journey on which to take us. It means that as bizarre as DogMan gets, it also kinda drags (no pun intended).

I suspect that if DogMan had more steadily built to an actual crescendo, it would be far more entertaining, and its inconsistencies in tone would be part of its messy fun. As it stands, it’s just a little too staid. Maybe DogMan has a bright future as a cult classic, but I doubt it.