Max barking up the wrong tree
Film a dog’s breakfast of sentimental hogwash, doing working pooch angle a disservice
Love the dog, hate the people: Max is a woofing howler.
As co-written and directed by New Yorker Boaz Yakin, Max is a movie that mythologizes a heroic American “war dog” while making the humans around him look like simpering and (in some cases) sleazy idiots.
The premise is simple and often simple-minded: Max the war dog returns from a tragic tour of duty in Iraq, where his handler (Robbie Amell) is killed in action; suffering from battle trauma, our canine hero bonds with the dead soldier’s surly younger brother (Josh Wiggins); chaos, betrayal and hijinks ensue, followed by transformation and redemption for the dog and the teenage boy.
Yakin’s tear-jerking movie also spends a lot of screen time waving the stars-and-stripes, indulging in an insufferable amount of U.S. military propaganda and shovelling in enough sentimental bullroar to choke a horse.
A lot of that crap is handled by Thomas Haden Church, who plays the proud papa of the dead soldier and the equally frustrated dad of the surviving boy. Lauren Graham plays the mom, Church’s long-suffering wife. Her husband is a warmongering bully.
Meanwhile, Wiggins hangs out with his own posse, especially best friend Chuy (Dejon LaQuake) and Chuy’s cousin (Mia Xitlali). She becomes Wiggins’ object of affection while mentoring him in the handling of difficult dogs. In addition to the family and friends circle, there is a requisite villain (Luke Kleintank), who served with Amell in the U.S. Marines and is now doing dirty deeds back home at Church’s expense.
None of the stories involving the humans is the least bit involving, interesting or even well-acted. The tedium is unbearable and Yakin used to make better movies than this paint-by-numbers job, such as A Price Above Rubies (1998) and Remember the Titans (2000).
But he does have that dog in this movie. Max’s breed is fascinating. The Belgian Malinois is a handsome, intelligent and energetic working dog that is already famous in America as the guard dogs used around the White House.
Bluntly speaking, Max the movie would have been far more interesting if it was entirely about a K-9 unit in a theatre of war. Making Max deal with civilian life reduces this movie to mindless mediocrity.