Luc Besson’s Dogman is in search of some kind of distinctive armature on which to hang its psychoanalytical and philosophical ramblings. Which is ironic considering that Douglas Munrow (Caleb Landry Jones), the paralyzed “Dogman” of the film’s title, makes much ado about having discovered his voice through drag, pontificating on the value of disguises and lip-synching while dressed as Édith Piaf, Marlene Dietrich, and Marilyn Monroe. All the while, Jones plays the dog-loving avenger as a puzzling riff on Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix’s Oscar-winning performances as the Joker. It’s a performance that, like much of the film, flits between telegraphing seriousness and wanting to be understood as camp.
Doug was abused and abandoned as a child, and after embracing his ostracization as an adult, he began taking in stray dogs and playing the part of the Pied Piper by having his “babies” burglarize the wealthy and take down criminals. It’s a patently absurd premise that’s undermined by the poorly caricatured suckers who dot this New Jersey-set tale, all simplistically propped up as targets of Doug’s steal-from-the-rich ethos. It doesn’t help that, despite its tonal instabilities, nothing here is as committed as Jones’s performance. Just as crime boss El Verdugo (John Charles Aguilar) feels like a stock baddie sprung from a comic book that no one ever read, the film’s overheated setting confusingly suggests Nawlins doing drag as Newark.
Throughout, the details of Doug’s life are delivered to us by the man to Evelyn (Jojo T. Gibbons), the criminal psychiatrist sent to interrogate him after he lands in jail at the start of the film. This flashback structure is a conspicuous exposition-delivery machine, and it instantly suffocates Dogman as Doug tells us about how his father (Clemens Schick) abused him and his mother (Irs Bry) abandoned him. Then, after being freed from the cage in his father’s backyard and landing in a boys’ home, the only kindness shown him is from Salma (Grace Palma), who immerses him in the pleasures of Shakespeare and catering to a feminine persona. It’s a nice bit of background texture, which makes it all the more jarring that, upon visiting Salma when he’s older, Doug learns that she’s married and it’s as if a switch turns on and an asexual drag queen is born.
In more ways than one, Dogman recalls Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, another mangled attempt at an incel-sympathizing origin tale, though at least Tom Tykwer’s film is more committed to its Freudian underpinnings and has a rather unique premise: a perfumer slash serial killer with an extraordinary sense of smell. By contrast, Besson never settles on how seriously he wants to take the violations that Doug endured and shaped his superego, nor does he do much to separate our hero from your run-of-the-mill Robin Hood-like avenger aside from casting a bunch of dogs as his merry men and saddling him with a fondness for drag.
As interesting as Dogman’s drag element is on the surface, after a while it starts to feel arbitrary—just a means of giving Besson an easy visual correlate for the notion of “disguise,” as nothing in the screenplay displays any real insight into or familiarity with the world of drag. Certainly the filmmaker never uses it as a springboard to meaningfully explore how community is fostered within queer spaces. Even before Drag Cher (Emeric Bernard-Jones) and Drag Madonna (Kyran Peet), Doug’s mother hens at the drag cabaret that pulls him out of his unemployment woes, have been bestowed an obligatory line of quippy dialogue, you already feel Besson’s eagerness to leave the space and further grease the wheels of the film’s action plot.
But, then, everything from that plot to Evelyn herself is no less flimsily defined and dynamized. When interrogating Dogman, you only feel Evelyn’s expository function as she makes risible statements like “It’s called free will. God invented it.” Dogman seems outwardly enamored with cosmic possibilities of meaning, but Besson’s script remains earthbound and unimaginative, right down to the climactic shootout cum dogfight that doesn’t evince the visual stamp that we’ve come to expect from the maker of La Femme Nikita and Lucy. “I’ve already died several times,” Doug states at the end of the film, at which point Besson almost randomly props our hero up as a symbol of Christ-like suffering. Perhaps fittingly, you’ll likely feel the same by then.
Since 2001, we've brought you uncompromising, candid takes on the world of film, music, television, video games, theater, and more. Independently owned and operated publications like Slant have been hit hard in recent years, but we’re committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or fees.
If you like what we do, please consider subscribing to our Patreon or making a donation.
