The question of whether Luc Besson has got his groove back is only going to annoy those who dispute any former groove-ownership. Besson himself might contend that box office success is in any case the sole criterion for assessing groove. At all events, this bizarre and macabre drama-thriller is watchable and Caleb Landry Jones gives an oddly engaging performance as Douglas Munrow, a wheelchair-using “Dogman”, questioned by police psychologist Evelyn (Jojo T Gibbs) after being arrested in full drag gear, smeared with blood, while at the wheel of a van filled with his “babies” – his dogs.
Murrow’s conversation with Evelyn reveals in flashback a childhood kept in a dog kennel by an abusive father, at whose hands a terrible injury was sustained; then there are poignant teen years in a children’s home where his eyes are opened to poetry by a Shakespeare-loving drama student who turns him into her greatest fan –and breaks his heart by leaving one day without saying goodbye. Murrow gets a grim job looking after a dog pound, and trains his canine inmates to attack on demand and get into rich people’s houses to steal jewellery in some outrageously silly heist scenes. And he does a drag show as Edith Piaf and Marlene Dietrich on weekends.
