Film Review of the Week

Animation

Dog Man (U)

Review: Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s the body of a fallen police officer surgically attached to the head of his trusty four-legged friend. Based on a series of graphic novels by Captain Underpants creator Dav Pilkey, Dog Man is a rumbustious animated caper set within the same fantastical universe as underwear-clad elementary school headteacher Benjamin Krupp, who is hypnotised into herodom by pupils George Beard and Harold Hutchins.

The mischievous tykes make cameos in writer-director Peter Hastings’ good-natured film, which draws inspiration from the first three instalments of the written franchise, most notably A Tale Of Two Kitties and the introduction of “the world’s most evilest cat” as a worthy-ish adversary for the hybrid supa hero. Young fans of the books will be delighted by a briskly paced page-to-screen adaptation (children in my screening were visibly bouncing as if spring-loaded in their seats) and a non-threatening comedic tone that begins with the life-saving medical procedure that heralds a crime-biting canine in Ohkay City.

Parents and older children don’t have many narrative bones to gnaw besides an occasional droll visual gag (the illuminated “Now Serving” sign inside the operating theatre of The Major Hospital In Town) and delightful references to Die Hard and Aliens that will soar above the heads of the target audience. Hastings’ script relies on toilet humour for puerile giggles: one of the cat antagonist’s Machiavellian creations is a nose-shaped monstrosity called The Butt Sniffer 2000. “Don’t show that one!” a self-censoring character gasps.

At the centre of the madness is dim-witted police officer Knight (voiced by Hastings) and fiercely intelligent pet dog Greg, who are victims of a ticking time bomb set by cat master criminal Petey (Pete Davidson) at the conveniently signposted Abandoned Expendable Warehouse. Hospital staff enact a hare-brained idea to save the badly injured heroes and Dog Man is born, to the chagrin of the mayor (Cheri Oteri) and the long-suffering police chief (Lil Rel Howery), and the delight of Live! Breaking News Live! reporter Sarah Hatoff (Isla Fisher) and her swarthy Scottish cameraman, Seamus (Billy Boyd).

Petey’s chaotic attempts at world domination with his despairing assistant (Poppy Liu) give birth to adorable kitten clone Li’l Petey (Lucas Hopkins Calderon) and resuscitate telekinetic supervillain Flippy the Fish (Ricky Gervais) with predictably cat-aclysmic consequences.

Dog Man is a low-stakes, high-energy romp rendered in colourful animation that honours the whimsical, childlike aesthetic of Pilkey’s graphic novels. The plot unfolds “like a lawn chair in a hurricane”, as one character so aptly puts it, barrelling excitedly between set pieces including a Godzilla-like rampage of anthropomorphised multi-storey buildings brought to life by a ruptured pipe at the Living Spray factory. Heart-tugging sentiment is laid on thickly with a trowel.

Action

Love Hurts (15)

Review: Love doesn’t just hurt, it requires urgent hospital attention in John Wick fight coordinator Jonathan Eusebio’s breathlessly choreographed directorial debut. Wince-inducing martial arts and stunt sequences, including fisticuffs in a kitchen using cookie cutters as knuckle dusters, snuggle up next to an offbeat romantic comedy in Love Hurts. Academy Award winner Ke Huy Quan, who rampaged with a bum bag in Everything Everywhere All At Once, showcases his athletic prowess with a dazzling array of props in expertly stylised brawls that draw oxygen from hyperkinetic camerawork, snappy editing and spurts of droll humour.

During the aforementioned kitchen smackdown, the camera temporarily settles inside a working microwave and a fridge as combatants are pummelled into bruised and bewildered submission. Screenwriters Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard and Luke Passmore delight in doling out wanton violence and employ multiple voiceovers to gatecrash the internal monologues of characters as they wrestle with amorous feelings. Screen chemistry between Quan and fellow Oscar winner Ariana DeBose serves the predictable plot but is lukewarm at best. Sparks fly far more convincingly between two seemingly mismatched supporting characters, flung together in blood-spattered adversity.

Real estate agent Marvin Gable (Quan) walked away from his old life as a hit man for his cold-hearted brother Alvin (Daniel Wu) aka Knuckles. He has successfully reinvented himself as one of the top sellers at Frontier Realty, working for a caring and compassionate boss (Sean Astin) who treats him like family. Colleagues including assistant Ashley (Lio Tipton) are blissfully unaware of Marvin’s dark past. His brother’s former accountant, Rose Carlisle (DeBose), who Marvin was supposed to kill, surfaces unexpectedly and announces her return by sending Valentine’s Day messages to Knuckles and his slippery right-hand man, Renny (Cam Gigandet).

Knuckles dispatches poetry-spouting assassin The Raven (Mustafa Shakir) and two bickering henchmen, King (Marshawn “Beastmode” Lynch) and Otis (Andre Eriksen), to torture Marvin until he gives up Rose’s current location. Alas, Marvin doesn’t know her whereabouts and he reluctantly meets the intimidation by dusting off an impressive repertoire of hand-to-hand combat skills. When he does eventually collide with Rose, she is no mood to spend the rest of her life as a fugitive, looking over her shoulder: “Running ain’t living!”

Timed to melt a few hearts ahead of Valentine’s Day, Love Hurts is a deliriously fast-paced action comedy from the producers of Nobody, which blends a similarly spicy cocktail of high-octane stunts and macabre humour. Eusebio draws on his vast experience as a fight choreographer to elevate the cast’s bone-crunching confrontations, spinning the camera around characters and occasionally shooting overhead to capture carnage from every angle. Barry White’s swooning You Are The First, The Last, My Everything is a cheeky soundtrack choice to accompany one particularly brutal bout. Love disembowels and eviscerates.

Thriller

September 5 (15)

Review: Where were you on September 11 2001 when hijacked passenger planes were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre? More than likely, you were watching live news coverage of unimaginable tragedy unfolding in real time. Almost 30 years earlier, a team of ABC Sports journalists covering the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics were responsible for the first live broadcast of a terrorist attack on television to an estimated global audience of 900 million people.

On September 5, cameras intended for glowing coverage of sporting excellence were retrained on the Olympic Village after eight Palestinians from the militant group Black September stormed the athletes’ accommodation, killing two members of the Israeli team. Terrorists took a further nine Israelis hostage and demanded the release of prisoners held in Israel. The world held its breath as German authorities attempted to negotiate a resolution without further bloodshed.

Swiss director Tim Fehlbaum relives the outrage from the perspective of the ABC Sports team in a gripping thriller guaranteed to have audiences chewing nails down to the cuticles, even if they know the tragic outcome. A lean script written by Moritz Binder, Fehlbaum and Alex David steadily tightens a knot of tension in stomachs, rarely venturing outside a dimly lit and stiflingly hot control room where production crew are glued to flickering TV screens and radio frequencies, scavenging scraps of verifiable information to share with viewers.

ABC Sports junior producer Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) begins the early shift on September 5 with a small crew including technical director Jacques Lesgards (Zinedine Soualem) and native speaker Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch), who translates news coming out of the media centre and Olympic Village. Head of operations Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin) is enjoying a few hours of sleep in a side room while ABC Sports president Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) has retired for the night to his hotel after thrilling coverage of Mark Spitz’s seventh gold in the swimming pool. Gunshots ring out across the Olympic Village and Geoff confers with Marvin and Roone to make split-second decisions about the morality of capturing the potential execution of Israeli athletes live on screen.

September 5 is a masterful dramatisation of shocking events in 1972, when the home nation hoped that hosting the Games would restore its post-war reputation and not remind viewers of “the last time armed Germans patrolled fences”. Fehlbaum exerts a vice-like grip over pacing, sky-rocketing our blood pressures with long takes on handheld cameras to nervously prowl ABC Sports’ makeshift broadcast facility, which is beset by technical gremlins. He elicits a compelling lead performance from Magaro, with scintillating, sweat-beaded support from Sarsgaard and Chaplin.