Megan Leavey *** / *****
Directed by: Gabriela Cowperthwaite.
Written by: Pamela Gray and Annie Mumolo & Tim Lovestedt.
Starring: Kate Mara (Megan Leavey), Tom Felton (Andrew Dean), Edie Falco (Jackie Leavey), Bradley Whitford (Bob), Common (Gunny Martin), Geraldine James (Dr. Turbeville), Will Patton (Jim), Damson Idris (Michael Forman), Ramon Rodriguez (Matt Morales), Jonathan Howard (Pete Walters), Miguel Gomez (Gomez), Varco (Rex).
We all know – the easiest way to get people to cry watching a movie is to have a dog in it. There are no happy dog movies – not really – even the ones that are happy for most of their runtime, will always end with that dog dying. That’s the way these things work. I will fully admit that I have watched many of these movies, and most of the time they do what they set out to do – make me cry. But I don’t often feel good about myself the next day when a film like Marley and Me makes me cry. They are so baldy manipulative, and you cry, and that can be cathartic, but when you look back at it, you feel silly. Megan Leavey is the latest dog film – it’s about the title character, played by Kate Mara, who is going nowhere in her life – just hanging out, depressed, and arguing with her mom (Edie Falco). Seemingly out of the blue, she decides to enlist in the Marines. Once a Marine, she sets her sites on working with the K-9 unit – with a bomb sniffing dog, although I doubt even she could explain why. If you’ve read this far, you probably already know how this is going to play out – and you would mostly be correct. She eventually gets a dog – the meanest one in training – named Rex, and the pair will eventually bond – and head off to Iraq together – to prove themselves, which they do. Then, injured, Megan decides to leave the Marines – and wants to adopt Rex – and will not take no for an answer. (Full disclosure, even writing this summary is making me mist up a little bit).
There are a few things that make Megan Leavey a better than normal dog movie – one that still made me cry, but not one that makes me feel silly for crying. For one things, it’s more than a dog movie – it’s also a war movie. And while war movie clichés are even more ingrained than dog movie clichés, you don’t often see the two of them together – and it works quite well. The war scenes are different, even when they feel the same – because of that dog, and the different perspective it gives to those scenes. But the main difference is in the way director Gabriela Cowperthwaite makes the film. She doesn’t push too hard, doesn’t try to underline every moment with emotion – she allows the actors and their actions to do that naturally. The war scenes are not kinetic energy in the form of rapid fire editing to convey chaos – but more clearly, fluidly directed. Upon her return to America – and leaving the Marines, Megan falls back into depression – but Cowperthwaite doesn’t overdo these scenes either – not even when Mara (who is quite good as Leavey) has a monologue about Rex at a group therapy session. Cowperthwaite, moving to features after her documentary Blackfish about poor Tilikum the Killer Whale became one of the most talked about docs of recent years (seriously, it’s pretty much the only doc in the last decade people who don’t normally talk to me about docs mentions), and she proves herself more than able her. For her part, Mara – who is an actress I’ve always liked, even though she isn’t often given the best roles – proves herself more than capable to carry a movie on her back.
It’s undeniable that the movie is built on clichés – that’s kind of the deal here, and you know that going in. But it delivers on those clichés in ways that are satisfying – both as you watch, and when you look back at it.
