Max

Max

The one thing I thought I could rely on: that there would be a scene where Max would make me sob. I seem to have a soft spot for any dog that appears on the screen. Even Marley and Me, which admittedly wasn’t all that great, had me crying my eyes out. Old Yeller? What was that? I was put in an actual fontal position. So a movie depicting a military dog who is later deployed to live with an unruly Kyles’ teenage brother after Kyle dies. Oh, give me a bucket of tissues!

Except Max is so incompetent, it did not even cause me to feel a shudder even once. Yes, the scene in which Max yells at Kyle’s coffin and then crawls next to it with resigned sadness could have moved me, but I had already witnessed the viral clip of that very scene. From then on, most of this film’s emotional climaxes, which we always expect in this type of films, are pretty much botched up.

There isn’t a moment, for instance, when teenaged Justin (Josh Wiggins) is so enraged by Kyle’s untimely death that he takes out his rage on poor Max only to later on in a moment filled with tears tell the dog how much he loves it. On the contrary, the bond between Justin and Max seems to develop slowly. Max, for instance, is quick to warm up to Justin who has to look after the animal, a task which he does, albeit with little enthusiasm.

Over time, he is able to train Max to walk next to him without a leash. In the next scene, he goes mountain biking in the woods where Max is able to keep up with him earning the respect of Justin. The stunning new girl (Mia Xitlali) happens to be a budding dog trainer, so Max comes in handy when trying to get to know her. And that pretty much wraps it up.

You can argue that it helps the film after all. But let’s be honest, films such as this are made for unnecessary teary-hearted scenes. Why refrain from those in the first instance?

The remainder of Max is simply strange. Thomas Haden Church plays the role of Justin’s father, a cold military man who got injured during the Gulf I war and had always cherished his older son more. Lauren Graham plays the mother’s role. She is quite shy and can only manage a dignified sob over Kyle’s dead body and admires her surviving son and husband.

Next, we have Luke, who was close to Kyle in Afghan but is described more like a saboteur who was able to swipe weapons from the Taliban and is back to attempt selling it in the US. And this is where it all starts to unravel. Justin has a side gig in which he pirated video games and sells them to his friend’s cousin Emilio who happens to be a petty criminal. As it happens, Luke is selling arms to Emilio, which Justin finds out when he inexplicably follows them into the forest, creating danger for himself, Max, his friends, and his entire family.

Speculating on how a supposedly pure story of a boy’s love for his dog and of their bond ascends to the level of a run of the mill thriller involving shady arms dealing is quite a puzzle as well. Yes, I agree, Max manages to save the day and everything turns out well. But I promise you, people were, however, dry-eyed.

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