MAX – The Review

MAX is an Afghanistan War-set battlefield adventure and a look at the unbreakable bond between a Marine and his military working dog ……. for about the first ten minutes! What’s left for another long hour and a half, despite some moments of bravura and lazy tugs at the heart-strings, is a poorly-written, Texas-set melodrama that I can’t recommend. The end credits for MAX play over vintage photos of dogs in combat, from the Civil War to WWI and WWII to Iraq. Dogs have been trained by the military as scouts, sentries and trackers for centuries and I wish that was the story that the producers of MAX had tackled. A kind of canine WAR HORSE might have made for a stirring adventure. On the surface, MAX is an old fashioned throwback to more innocent family fare which may seem like a good antidote to the violent and defeatist thrillers a lot of younger moviegoers seem to be hooked on, but it’s crippled by a weak script, poor performances, and a half-hearted sheen of sentimentality that all but masks the more serious undertones of the story. I wanted to bond with MAX, but I could not.

As MAX opens, Max is serving on the frontlines in Afghanistan alongside his handler, U.S. Marine Kyle Wincott (Robbie Amell). In a confusingly-directed scene, things go wrong on maneuvers and Kyle is killed. Max, traumatized by the loss of his buddy, is unable to remain in service, so he’s shipped stateside and, after causing a scene at Kyle’s funeral, is scheduled to be destroyed. The only human Max seems willing to connect with is Kyle’s younger brother Justin (Josh Wiggins), so Kyle’s parents (Lauren Graham and Thomas Haden Church) step in and adopt the sad hound. But Kyle’s shady marine buddy Tyler (Luke Kleintank – who we know we can’t trust because Max snarls at him) moves in as well and is soon selling cases of weapons he brought back from the war over the border to the Mexican cartel (how he snuck so much firepower back home is never explained). Justin is wise to Tyler’s crimes but the local sheriff (Owen Harn) is in on the misconduct so no one believes him. It’s soon up to Justin and Max to save the day as the film meanders towards an action-packed resolution involving kidnapping, shoot-outs, and an exploding car full of military-grade firearms.

Boaz Yakin’s direction is uninspired while his screenplay (with Sheldon Yettich), apparently afraid of children’s attention spans, jumps so quickly from scene to scene that no character is allowed to develop. Besides Tyler and that corrupt sheriff, the villains here include Mexican gun-runners and a pair of slobbering evil Rottweilers who are all too cartoonish take seriously. I hate to say it, but even Max himself lacks charisma. The breed the military mostly trains is these Belgian Sheppards, which are smaller and darker than the more cinematic German Sheppard. They’re obviously intelligent animals, but they lack the personality and expressive eyes of a Rin Tin Tin. But Max (played by Carlos!) isn’t the only star turning in a sub-par performance. Josh Wiggins as Justin has an irritatingly surly screen presence, which is perfect at the beginning of the film where he’s a spoiled brat playing pirated video games while wearing his stupid ‘Murica’ shirt. But by the film’s end, he hasn’t grown much – though at least he gets a girlfriend. Justin never really seems comfortable with Max and this has to be the first time in movie history that a boy-and-his-dog love story was marred by a lack of chemistry between the human/canine leads. But the worst is Lauren Graham as his mom, who painfully recites lines like “We already lost one son. If it’s alright with you, I’d like to hold on to the other.” It may be a poor script, but this woman’s deer-in-the-headlights delivery is embarrassing. There’s more awkward/bad TV-style teen acting from Dejon LaQuake as Justin’s Mexican pal Chuy and tough-talking Mia Xitlati as his Mexican dog expert human love interest. Only jug-eared Thomas Haden Church escapes MAX with his dignity intact, delivering an earnest performance, changing from gruff to sweet and back as a father wounded in more ways than one. Church transcends the bad writing in several scenes, especially a nice speech recounting his own tragic war experience.

I’m not sure why I had such high hopes for MAX. I haven’t seen a god dog movie in a while and perhaps I didn’t expect such a lame and cheap-looking film to be released in the height of summer against stuff like JURASSIC WORLD and INSIDE OUT, films which just magnify its many flaws by contrast. MAX plays more like something you expect to be dumped in the fall or in February. Skip it now and fetch it at Redbox in a couple of months.

 1 1/2 of 5 Stars