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By Paul Meekin
“And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we’re gonna keep it.” – Richard Nixon, Re: Checkers the Dog.
My interminably loving and patient girlfriend lives in an apartment with two 12 year old cats, Mickey and Sammy. Adopted by her roommate, I’ve grown accustomed to the little buggers. Soon, they’ll be moving away with the roommate, and soon after that…probably die.
This is a bummer. These animals have provided me affection, entertainment, and a number of adorable pictures that filled my soul with joy.
That’s the thing about pets. They don’t care if you’re a good person, pay your taxes, smoke, or vote for the green party. If you feed them food, they will feed your soul in a way humans cannot.
For many, it’s easier to connect with animals than it is to connect with people. For Megan Leavey, who joined the Marines to escape her directionless life, it wasn’t until she discovered the Corps’ bomb-sniffing dog program, that she found a purpose and a path; and saved the lives of servicemen and civilians along the way.
This is a long way of saying real heroes may not wear capes, but sometimes they carry a leash. Leavey is such a hero, and the eponymous movie about her and her dog Rex, is a thrilling, inspiring, tearjerking, warm, and joyous story of an American Marine and her bomb-sniffing dog.
In a strong first dramatic effort by Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite of “Blackfish“ fame, “Megan Leavey” sets the table from the first shots, as we see Megan (Kate Mara) waiting, alone, for the bus that will whisk her away from her small and lonely town to a life that will hopefully give her purpose.
It doesn’t. Marine basic training is understandably tough, and the undersized Leavey has difficulty navigating the training; from obstacle courses to rifle qualification, she is mediocre at best. Eventually her body toughens up and she makes it past boot camp (called in The Receiving Phase in the Marines), but her head lags behind; getting into an argument with her less than supportive mother (Edie Falco) after she missed Megan’s military graduation, and eventually getting into a shitload of trouble for taking a wiz in the bushes on base.
And I mean shitload. Her punishment for this bladder calamity? Shit duty; Cleaning out the kennels of Marines’ K9 facility, where they use to train dog-sniffing dogs. After seeing these animals and connecting with one of them, Megan finally finds her purpose, endeavoring to get on the bomb disposal team. She applies herself and exceeds at the things she was merely mediocre at before.
You would think these scenes would be rife with cliche; military hazing, sexism, and speeches about how Megan “can’t do it” and Megan exclaiming she “can.” I’m happy to report this is not the case. By focusing the movie specifically on the K9 element of the training, what could have been cliched becomes unique and informative; taking on documentary feel. You learn a bit about how the dogs work, how the relationship between dog and trainer work, and some military terminology along the way. Even the ‘tough love’ feels unique. Neat!
Despite the politics of the war, this is a decidedly a-political movie in all regards. Even when Megan is hazed, it’s because she’s a rookie and because of the reputation that proceeds her, not because she’s undersized or a woman.
What happens once Megan is deployed with her dog, Rex, I won’t reveal, except to say these scenes, from tense searches to riveting battle scenes to an explosion you won’t see coming, are excellent. I won’t say there’s nary a dull moment, because there are moments of introspection and contemplation, from a confessional card game to Megan bonding with Rex in the back of an airplane. All of the scenes are just the right length and hit the right tone.
For reasons I also won’t reveal, Megan comes home and we get the now-cliched series of scenes that show Megan struggling with re-adjusting to civilian life. We’ve seen it in “The Hurt Locker,” and we’ve seen it really hit home in “American Sniper.”
If there’s one misstep it’s that these scenes go on just a bit too long, but even then, they are unique, focusing on incidents specific to what Megan experienced in the field. So when she hears a bump in the night, it’s not a gunshot she’s worried about, it’s a bomb. When she notices a dog left in a hot car and gets a louisville slugger, it rings true because this is the logical fall out of what she went through while serving.
We even get a quality speech out of Bradley Whitford that sets the movie’s endgame in motion. Cliche or not, trope or not, from this speech onward, the movie is a series of moments that left me a blithering mess of almost tears.
You know that feeling when you’re not sure if you’re going to cry, so your throat feels weird? Yeah, that lasted about 20 minutes. When you consider how isolated she was in the movie’s first shot, to who surrounds her in the final one, tears will roll.
If it feels like I’m jumping around a bit, it’s only because I am. This movie is special and I don’t dare ruin it. You can look up the true story on Wikipedia if you want, but I implore you don’t. This is an inspirational and real biopic that’s for fans of military movies, fans of animal pictures, and fans of good movies about the triumph of the human spirit in the face of our own meddling brains and even families.
As an aside, I’d be remiss if I didn’t address the Amazonian Elephant in the room. “Wonder Woman,” a fictional movie about a fictional indestructible super-human is sadly going to eat this movie alive.
They are different movies in different genres, but I ask this; if you have a little girl, or you are a little girl, which movie do you think does more to inspire? The movie about the woman who can’t die in the face of bullets, or the movie about the woman who knows she can die at any moment, and still enters the fray? Who can (and does) get knocked down, and gets back up.
That’s what I thought.
Thus, on the Libertarian Republic Rating System, on a scale of Karl Marx to Ron Paul, Megan Leavey gets a perfect Ron Paul. This is a joyous celebration of the human spirit. A liberating experience if there ever was one. It’s politics are there are no politics. Hell even a Chuck Schumer name-drop can’t dent my praise.
Megan Leavey is out June 9th and is getting a decent sized release. Seek it out, even if finding a theater playing it is a little ruff.
