| Dog Soldiers Released: 2002 MPAA Rating: R Genre: Werewolf Nuts and Bolts: A British combat unit runs training exorcises within the highlands of Scotland. But during this routine mission they encounter a coven of werewolves who want nothing more than to turn their entrails into extrails. Whoooo let the dogs out? Summary: So here we have two campers. Since the producers of this lovely flick didn't deem it necessary to give the bloke and his blokette a name, we'll just call them Jack and Jill. Jack sees Jill. Jack gets randy. Jill is a ho. Jill gives it up. Jack and Jill go into pup tent to attempt and try and score. But along comes a werewolf who's really quite angry and in the end there's nothing but gore. Yeah, yeah okay…so my rhyming couplets suck, so what! I'm an amateur horror movie reviewer not a bleeding poet for Chrissakes. You want hearts and flowers go grab James Joyce. You want horror movie reviews you stay here. So lets flash forward a little. Now we meet Captain Ryan and Private Cooper of British Special Forces. Actually Ryan is running Cooper through a private training mission to see if he's got the sack to join Special Forces. He instructs Cooper to shoot a dog in the head. But Cooper refuses citing that he won't kill a dog with out a good reason. Needless to say Cooper doesn't make it into Special Forces. So now we go a little bit further into the timeline and we find Cooper back with his old unit. The squad is led by Sergeant Harry G Wells and includes: Bruce, Joe, Terry and Witherspoon (Spoon). These guys are just your regular camouflage wearing gung-ho commando types. They're stuck in the mountains of Scotland on a training mission. They muck around for a bit and do the whole get-to-know-ya thing before discovering that the rival unit is having a bit of trouble. They find the afore-mentioned Captain Ryan bloody and crusty lumbering about in the woods. Dude is seriously fucked up and he's hyperventilating with half his guts hanging out. The soldiers do a quick makeshift patch-up job on him and try to radio for an emergency evac. Ryan drones on about "Them" and "They" without giving any real indication as to who these people are. They are unable to radio for backup. So now that all the fun has been taken out of this exorcise, the soldiers try to move their asses to a safe point. But as they are marching through the woods a big bad werewolf pops out and mauls Bruce. Sarge tries to save him, but gets disemboweled in the process. Private Cooper takes command and rescues the bleeding Sergeant. They high tail it to the nearest road where they find a civilian named Megan trucking along in her pick-up. They all pile into her car and she agrees to take them to a house a few kilometers up the road. They get to the house and everyone is scared shitless. Sarge is taken upstairs where Cooper tries to mend his wounds using Super-Glue® (of all things). The rest of the soldiers eat some leftover food and take stock of their ammunition. Now Captain Ryan seems to be acting a bit squirrelly. He's really a cocky little twat and he appears to be remarkably healing himself from what should have been some pretty fucking fatal wounds. But there's no time to dick around with him because the werewolves are trying to break down the door. They're huffing and puffing too, so you KNOW they mean business. Now the soldiers do what soldiers are wont to do in times of crisis. They shoot the shit out of the things. The bullets don't really do much more than superficial damage, but the noise and smoke are enough to at least keep them at bay. Apparently these wolves are sensitive to light as well, because Megan keeps flashing them with a camera she finds. After several minutes of intense fighting the wolves retreat to lick their wounds. Terry is killed during the melee. So now everyone has to come to grips with the fact that what they are facing ARE indeed werewolves. Megan explains that she has been traveling this valley for some time researching the phenomenon. We also find out that there is more to Ryan than meets the eye. For starters, he is almost completely healed of his wounds. Secondly, we learn that the Special Forces team deliberately sent the commando squad into the forests as bait for the werewolves. You see, Special Forces wanted a live one for themselves so they could study it and dress it up in drag and pass it off as an extra for a Michael Jackson video. We come to discover that there is a shed out back with a land rover in it. But they need someone to act as decoy so that another soldier can go and hot-wire it. Spoon is elected to act as decoy and he marches out the front door with a flare in order to attract the attention of the werewolves. As the werewolves converge on Spoon's position, Joe runs out the back towards the shed. He hotwires the truck and turns the headlights on. As he does so he finds a werewolf gnawing on the face of an earlier victim. Joe blasts through the doors of the shed and the werewolf follows suit. As he backs up towards the house, the werewolf somehow manages to get inside the cab and kills Joe. What can I say? It's a dog eat dog world out there. To make matters worse, Captain Ryan is starting to feel particularly feisty. His wounds are completely healed and we now discover that he is turning into a werewolf for the first time. He transforms but the soldiers take him down hard and fast, semper-fi style baby! He gets impaled on a piece of debris and pushed out the door. So now the only ones left are Cooper, Megan, Spoon and the ailing Sarge. Understanding the werewolves pack mentality, they realize that the werewolves are probably regrouping in the shed. They use a canister of compressed gas to blow the shed to bits but discover that none of the werewolves were inside at the time. This is when we discover that Megan is actually one of them. The house belongs to her family and the entire family are all werewolves. Megan is sort of the black sheep of the family and she clings to her humanity more than the others do. But she can no longer resist the change and begins to transform. Cooper shoots her in the head. It's a dog's life. Now Sarge is back in the game. His wounds have healed quite quickly and he realizes that it is only a matter of time before he becomes a werewolf as well. Cooper and Sarge split off from Spoon as the werewolves attack en masse. Spoon puts up a helluva fight and succeeds in going toe to toe with a werewolf for at least a full minute. But alas, the Werewolf manages to grab Spoon by the head and tear him to pieces. Gotta give the guy credit though. He doesn't go down like no punk. They could of used his ass in the colonial marines on LV-426. Sarge and Cooper fuck about with a werewolf upstairs before retreating down into the kitchen. Cooper hides in the cellar as Sarge rips out the gas line from beneath the stove. He lights it up and blows the entire house to kingdom come, werewolves and all. Cooper survives because he was in the cellar. Ahhh…but guess who ELSE was in the cellar with him? Yup. It's that ole rascally Captain Ryan. Ryan the Werewolf attacks Cooper one last time. Cooper finds a silver letter opener and stabs it into Ryan's chest. (Convenient eh?) As the werewolf reels back in pain, Cooper finishes him off with the last bullet from his handgun. Our hero is now free to emerge from the remains of the house and eke out a peaceful happy existence. Hey, the sun even shines on a dog's ass some days. Acting/Dialogue: The acting is really well done in this all things considered. There's more to these characters than just your standard cardboard cutout marines. I love how Sarge is NOT your stereotypical macho-Camacho commando type. Sean Pertwee infuses a bit of passion as well as humor into this pivotal character. The kid from Trainspotting plays the part of Cooper in this movie (No, not Obi-Wan Kenobi the OTHER kid from Trainspotting). He takes the spotlight right away and greedily holds on to it throughout the course of the film. He's got the machismo thing going for him, but he also shows his humanitarian side. He's kind of the pikey version of Michael Biehn (Aliens, the Rock, Terminator). But the fan favorite is without a doubt Spoon. At first he comes off as the wisecracking goofball, but he definitely shows us that he is not a man to be fucked with. Boo-yah! Gore: And here I thought the term 'Bloody' was just a fancy British catch phrase. This movie delivers a four-course meal complete with brains, guts, spleens, the occasional kidney and a cool tall glass of "Holy shit I'm fucking dead!" to wash it all down with. We see at least two disembowelments, which look freakishly real even though it's obvious that they were using sausages in place of lower intestines. Sarge even makes a humorous little comment about that. We see a wolfie getting some head. Urr…that is to say, we see him GNAWING on somebody's head. There, that's better. Oh yeah…and we also get to see Ryan shoving his big stick into Cooper's mouth. Uhh…urr…what I mean is…he shoves a large pointed piece of debris into the soldier's face. Damn double entendres. Aww fuck it…this movie has gore aplenty. Check it. Guilty Pleasures: All the werewolves are naked. Lunacy I tell you! Lunacy! The Good: Now this is the way a fucking werewolf movie SHOULD be! Move over American Werewolf in London, there's a new dog in town. That's right baby, no more of these half-ass looking CGI werewolves. These guys are lean mean fighting machines! The sum totality of a werewolf movie can be attributed to how well done the actual werewolves are. Now while there are some movies that can still get by on substandard FX (Silver Bullet, Ginger Snaps), the FX really is the make-it or break-it barometer by which these flicks are judged. And in that, Dog Soldiers does NOT disappoint. Director Neil Marshall knows exactly how to use lighting and camera angles to get the most out of our dodgy dog boys. A lot of films suffer from showing you too much. Take for instance the movie Bad Moon. For a low budget werewolf flick, the FX really aren't that bad. But unfortunately, the director lets you see too much of the end product and thus its easy to spot the mechanical short-comings. As cool as the wolf in that looks, it is way too obvious that it is animatronic. Dog Soldiers however bypasses that problem by using the Howling school of thought. Less is more. Throughout most of the film, we really only see quick snippets of the wolves; shadows running through the trees, an arm here, a quick close up there. It's not until the third act that we really get to see these beasties in all their mangy glory. And even then, Marshall is careful to only give us about 2 seconds of exposure per shot. It's enough to let us 'see' the creatures but not enough time that we can take notice of the imperfections. Because of this, I find that Neil Marshall is a tremendous director for this type of movie. He knows what he's doing. Marshall knows exactly what elements he needs to include to make this movie work. In the beginning he uses a lot of jerky sweeping camera pans that quickly fills the audience with a sense of anxiety. The footage looks very real, as if we were watching one of those war correspondence films from Desert Storm. Soon after the first act, the team reaches the house. Now we're supposed to think that this would allow the audience a chance to relax a bit and breathe a sigh of relief. Not so. The tension slowly creeps along and the panic increases as we are shoved into a dark claustrophobic environment. He shows us that these guys are in just as much danger on the inside as they are on the outside. I think Marshall does a real good job with spatial composition overall. Another aspect that I enjoyed was that they maintained all of the standard lore concerning werewolves; i.e. Full moon transformations, curse transferred through tooth and nail, allergic to silver etc. I can't tell you enough how much I appreciate that. That's one of the problems that are affecting many vampire films these days. Too many vamp movies are steadily moving farther and farther away from the traditional lore in favor of modernization. Now there is nothing wrong with that, but once in a while its nice to see someone follow the old school rules. If they can't follow it with vampires, then by golly I'm glad they can follow it with werewolves. Again, hats off to Neil Marshall. I also really dug the gag-humor that was placed in here. Humor is always a dangerous tool to use in a dramatic film, because it can so easily be mis-used and actually end up hurting the overall product (Phantom Menace anyone?) But in Dog Soldiers, the humor is timely and appropriate to each scene. As mentioned earlier, there's a scene where Sarge is gutted and as he looks down at his intestinal tract unraveling on the ground beneath him he screams out "Sausages!" Upon that, Cooper begins clumsily trying to shove Sarge's guts back into his stomach while exclaiming, "They won't fit!" The sausages comment makes me laugh for two reasons. First, because it appears that sausages were used as the prop model for Sarge's guts. I'm not positive if this is the case but that's what it looks like (Haven't listened to the audio commentary on the DVD yet, so maybe this part is explored more). The second aspect of this joke that made me laugh is the fact that sausages are commonly grinded from pig parts. This works for the whole three-little-pigs/Big-bad Wolf motif. Very well done. There's another scene where a soldier finds himself in an un-winnable situation and he refers to it as the Kobayashi Maru. The Kobayashi Maru (No-win scenario) was detailed in the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. There are also several moments where the soldiers either overtly or unconsciously make references to the story of the Three Little Pigs and Little Red Riding Hood. The inferences are obvious enough to make you notice them, but subtle enough so that they don't distract you from the provincial scene. And lastly, there is the death of Spoon. As Cooper and Sarge discover his sausage-like remains, Sarge queries, "Where is Spoon?" Cooper replies, "There is no Spoon". This is a reference to the same bit of dialogue used in the Matrix. I actually get the impression that the character was named Spoon strictly for the benefit of this gag. Now don't get me wrong. All of this is not suggest that Dog Soldiers is by any means a 'funny' movie. It's not. It's a high-tension, colorful combat kaleidoscope of wily wolfie wetworks. If you like films like the Howling or American Werewolf in London, then you owe it to yourself to check out Dog Soldiers. Trust me, you won't be disappointed. Okay, now that I came all over myself I guess I should address some of the nit-picks I had with the film. The Bad: I really didn't care for the treatment that Megan was giving. It seemed a bit forced and more than a tad predictable. I don't think enough explanation was given as to how she could resist the transformation whereas her other family members couldn't. She mentions that she is more in tune with her human side, but I ain't buying it. The whole scene seemed really rushed to me. I dug her as a character and was kind of hoping that she would make it through the entirety of this picture. I also have some issue with the prologue. It just doesn't fit anywhere. Neither Jack or Jill are remotely memorable and nothing here does anything to service the story. The post Jack and Jill sequences was a mite confusing as well. All of the soldiers were dressed in the same clothes and it was difficult telling the characters apart. It wasn't until they get to the house that we begin to differentiate between them. Now I'm not up on my covert operations lingo, but I'm almost positive that the UK does NOT have any such unit designated as Special Forces. So far as I know, all they have is MI-5 and the SAS. Perhaps one of you chaps from across the Pond can elucidate on this issue for me. Oh yeah…and Megan doesn't show her titties. That's definitely one for the 'Bad' column. What were they thinking? You can't have a high-class horror film like this without the benefit of at least one frenetic female showing off the 'twins'. Like I said earlier, these are really just nit-picks and not anything that I feel robs the film of its pace or flavor. Buy it. Live it. Love it. Bloody plonker prat bugger soddin wanker naf tosser pip-pip cheerio and I'm out'a here! Great Lines "It's that time of the month." - Megan, before transforming into a bestial stark raving lunatic. If I have to explain this one to you, then there is absolutely no hope for you. "There is no Spoon." - Cooper after discovering Spoon's remains. This is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Matrix. "I hope I give you the shits you fucking wimp!" - Spoon's last words. "Now as of this moment as far as we're concerned we are 50K's behind enemy lines. Now if we do happen to make contact, I expect nothing less than gratuitous violence from the lot of you. Just cos we're firing blanks it doesn't mean we have to be thinking nice thoughts." - Sarge instructing the troops. "We are now up against live, hostile targets. So, if Little Red Riding Hood should show up with a bazooka and a bad attitude, I expect you to chin the bitch!" - Sarge instructing the troops some more. Overall Rating: 9 out of 10 severed heads. |
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