What did both Paul & myself think of the latest Ridley Scott opus The Dog Stars? The movie features Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, Margaret Qualley & Guy Pearce, among others, in a post-apocalyptic survival tale. Read on!
Paul’s Reaction: A handsome, smoothly directed feature from the prolific Ridley Scott that suffers from the sheer over-familiarity of the material. Here we are yet again in a post-apocalyptic near-future, following yet another virus that wipes out most of humanity. The year is 2035 and we are near an abandoned landing field just outside of Denver (the film was actually shot in Italy on a budget of $110M). The rundown airport is populated by two dudes who are trying to survive as best they can, Hig (Jacob Elordi) is a fairly quiet mechanic, who lost his wife and an unborn child but still hopes that there are pockets of civilization that he can eventually escape to. He loves getting into a beat-up plane and flying into a mostly empty Denver to get supplies and gasoline and medicine and also to visit his now empty former apartment. His cohort Bangley is an unsentimental survivalist. He assumes anyone near their compound is a scavenger and he shoots to kill. In fact, some marauding gangs may remind you of the demented sadists in the 28 Years Later films. But this one is played more like a western than a horror movie, with the two men representing two fundamentally opposed views of humanity, one optimistic, one pessimistic. And the vibe is mostly contemplative, interspersed with short bursts of action. When Jacob does finally take off to seek greener pastures, the aerial voyage leads to danger (the most exciting sequence in the film by far is him attempting to take off while savages on horseback try to jump on his plane to weigh him down) and to a sequence inside a seemingly utopian town run by Allison Janney in a stewardess uniform. The film kind of jumps the shark at that point, but Hig does get to meet the attractive Cima (a subdued Margaret Qualley) and her Pops (Guy Pearce) another survivalist type with a gun. The film has some beautiful aerial footage and solid acting all around. The problem is that there is nothing particularly original here. There is a YouTube video that identifies at least ten, count ‘em, ten Canadian post apocalyptic films, including the recent Canadian Screen Award nominated 40 Acres and The Well with Sheila McCarthy. Canadian filmmakers love post-apocalyptic films cause you shoot them in the woods and you can keep your budget down. Keeping the budget down is not Ridley Scott’s modus operandi (he notoriously uses ten different cameras for most major scenes so his actors won’t have to repeat themselves for coverage). The Dog Stars is very competently made, but not amongst Ridley Scott’s top ten.
Rating: 5 out of 10
Jason’s Reaction: I really do want to give Ridley Scott a lot of credit here; he certainly can get a movie made efficiently and even at such prolific output at a very young 88 years old. Just thinking that he has directed the recent Napoleon, Gladiator II and House of Gucci is making me think he has a whole deck of movies lined up. With that said, I have really felt that his last few efforts just don’t look or feel as good as his earlier work, and The Dog Stars is no exception.
We have seen this setup before (and Paul describes it better in his reaction above), in what happens after an apocalypse wipes out MOST of humanity, anda lot of the early act features Jacob Elordi & Josh Brolin trying to get to where they are going on very different terms, and at one point they meet up with a father (Guy Pearce) and daughter (Qualley) who are also survivalists. There’s a lot of slower pacing in this area of The Dog Stars, but eventually the action picks up with them dealing with savages that nearly act like zombies.
A lot of this plods along, but the movie has a very scenic look with a lot of aerial footage (I quite liked a few sequences where Elordi’s character turns the engine off of the plane and lets it glide). Yet so much of this lacks originality and scenes just lay there, mostly due to the flat direction from Scott. He does get a bit of mileage out of his leads; I feel like Jacob Elordi is in way too many movies and has his trademark stoic feel here, and Brolin fares a bit better at times. But there’s also a baffling third act involving a wacky performance by Alison Janney (yes, the Oscar winning actress) in a flight attendant outfit in an airport control room with a bunch of mercenaries, that I couldn’t even begin to believe how it all turned out. This then leads to a pretty weak finale that left me wanting more, much like the rest of the movie. Again, as much as I like that Mr. Scott is still out there making movies, I really want his next one to take a little bit more time and a bit more effort.
Rating: 5 out of 10
