Most children indulge in the occasional revenge fantasy. Imagine if a famous movie star decided to be your best friend – right after your actual best friend stopped talking to you. Or how about if MI5 got in touch with you because they needed a kid to help out with a top secret mission? Or what if you trained an enormous pack of assorted sizes of dogs to be your best friends, and they did your bidding and took down all your enemies and stole diamonds for you? This latter scenario is essentially the premise of the new film from Luc Besson, and it’s as wacky as it sounds.
Caleb Landry Jones plays Doug, our luckless protagonist, whose life is such an unimaginably relentless shitshow that he retreats entirely from humanity and holes up in an abandoned school with a pack of dozens of canine chums. The doggos’ rapport with Doug is so strong that it borders on psychic. They understand English perfectly. They are as happy tiptoeing into a wealthy older woman’s bedroom to silently lift an expensive necklace from her nightstand as they are gripping a local crime lord’s nutsack in their vice-like jaws.
