Based on a novel by Peter Heller, Ridley Scott's The Dog Stars is pretty conventional for a post-apocalyptic story. It doesn't even have zombies or vampires, just packs of people that have gone a little feral, desperate to survive. These people are dispatched without consequence, just like Native Americans in old Westerns; they are a convenient boogie-man. It draws elements from many other movies from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome to The Bad Batch. Yet it somehow manages to captivate, perhaps thanks to the fine casting and likable performances, and especially thanks to a couple of sequences wherein it appears that Scott has recaptured a smidgeon of his old magic.
Hig (Jacob Elordi) and his beloved dog Jasper live in an old airport with Bangley (Josh Brolin). The world has been devastated by a flu, leaving only a few scattered survivors. Hig is a mechanic and a pilot, and he flies a small Cessna looking for supplies and scouting for invaders. Bangley is a former military man and an expert sharpshooter, capable of taking out any unwanted guests with a single neat head shot. (He collects the casings and makes new bullets.) During his flights, Hig sometimes picks up a signal from Grand Rapids. After a tragedy (don't ask) he decides to go there and find out if anyone's still around.
After some trouble with his plane, he's forced to land in an unknown spot. He happens upon a small farm run by beautiful Cima (Margaret Qualley) and her grumpy "Pops" (Guy Pearce). "Pops" runs him off, but Cima treats him as a guest, bringing him food and eventually helping him clear away trees and rocks so that he can get the plane back up in the air. This task takes just long enough for Hig and Cima to grow close, although, since they are both mourning dead spouses, the movie thankfully doesn't rush into anything. The climax comes when the characters are forced to make a sudden escape.
Though it hardly reaches his artistic peak, The Dog Stars is probably Scott's best film in a decade. (I didn't see the unnecessary sequel Gladiator II.) His widescreen compositions are always striking, especially the flying sequences. In one powerful scene, Bangley takes on an army of tattooed attackers all by himself, and Scott uses night-vision goggles to give the scene an eerie quality. Another sequence involves Allison Janney as the creepy leader of a cult of survivors; Scott's camera moves through the space like a museum of plastic and mannequins and taxidermy with the most unsettling use of Dean Martin's "Memories Are Made of This" ever committed to cinema.
Sometimes a little bit of this and a little bit of that is just enough to make a movie worth watching. Spending time with the characters takes very little effort, and there's some emotion involved as they deal with their grief and look up at the stars (the sky is extra-bright with the lack of humanity and its lights). Plus, the movie clocks in a just under two hours, which is much appreciated. It would have been great if it had taken more risks, found more focus, but as it stands, The Dog Stars is pretty much just fine.
