Somewhere in the world is a great story about the elite dog soldiers who have helped the military for centuries. In the war in Afghanistan, for example, these dogs were used to locate munitions or people hiding in buildings. And like all soldiers, these dogs are susceptible to all of the injuries—mental and physical—that human soldiers are, including post-traumatic stress disorder. In the new film MAX, a canine used by the U.S. Marines—specifically Kyle Wincott (Robbie Amell)—is brought back to the United States when his trainer is killed in combat. Rattled and traumatized by the event, Max (a Belgian Shepherd) is eventually given to the family of Wincott, which includes his parents (Thomas Haden Church and Lauren Graham) and his younger brother Justin (Josh Wiggins, so good in last year's Hellion).
Even before Kyle's death, the Wincott family was in turmoil. Justin is a punk kid, selling pirated video games to local thugs and drug dealers for a nice profit, and we assume it's only a matter of time until he gets into much worse behavior. He also couldn't care less about his brother's adventures in Afghanistan. But when Max is given over the family, for some reason the dog is drawn to Justin, and the two eventually bond in a way that Justin hasn't with anyone else in his family. A combat vet himself, his father rides him pretty hard about "being a man" and "sacrifice," but he can't help but be impressed at how willing Justin is to take responsibility for the dog.
Justin's best friend Chuy (Dejon LaQuake) asks his cute female cousin Carmen (Mia Xitlali) to come help re-train Max, since she has people in her family that take in rescue dogs, and the three of them eventually become inseparable. I suppose writer-director Boaz Yakin (REMEMBER THE TITANS, A PRICE ABOVE RUBIES, FRESH) felt like the story of this dog and his new owner wasn't interesting enough to hold our attention, so he added a love interest for Justin and a small drug-dealing cartel to this small Texas town that Max & Friends must defeat before everyone can be fully healed.
You can still see the numbers in this paint-by-numbers, would-be action film, featuring a whole lot of running dogs (there are villainous canines too, in the form of a pair of nasty Rottweilers), speeding cars, gunplay, stunt biking, and even an exploding bridge. And nearly every second of it seems unnecessary.
There's nothing wrong with the actors in the film. Wiggins is a rising young actor who hasn't learned any bad habits in front of the camera yet, and let's hope it stays that way. Graham and Church are both good as grieving parents, trying their best to salvage the relationship they have with their remaining boy. But all of the cliche drug-dealer walk and talk feels tacked on, laughable, and worse than pointless.
For reasons you can probably figure out, you can't help but root for a film like this to get enough right to at least be admirable, if not great. But MAX is an empty exercise in vague patriotism that does a disservice to the very subject it's attempting to pay tribute to. And that's a shame because, as I said, I guarantee you there's a solid story to be told about military dogs one day, but this one ain't it.
