Review of Megan Leavey (2017) by Enric T — 18 Jun 2017

Maybe it's just my personality or maybe I'm just really cold, but tearjerkers don't work on me about 95 percent of the time. Sometimes it's because the movie is exploitative in nature; sometime it's because the movie just doesn't find its stride.

Megan Leavey falls firmly into the latter category. It's nothing short of well intended, but it's all very standard in the beats that it has and lackluster in illustrating depth in its characters.

Kate Mara does good work with what she's given, but the padded-out and pretty messy nature of the movie makes everything feel a bit dull, like a glorified Lifetime movie. Based on actual events that took place in the 2000s, it follows the titular character (Mara), a 20-something who doesn't have anything holding her down in her hometown.

We learn through some rushed voiceover that her best friend has died, she's been fired from her job, and she doesn't have a good relationship with her mom. With this, she decides to join the Marines, and she's soon assigned to take care of the dogs.

She's later sent to Iraq with a particularly aggressive dog named Rex who saves her life during an explosion in the field, leading her to try to adopt him. The last part of that last sentence doesn't actually come into play until the final 35 minutes of the movie or so, despite what the trailers may have you belief.

What's arguably the biggest problem with the movie is that doesn't have a good sense of pacing and therefore can't cover its content and beat progressions in an even way. The story takes place over a few years and often skims through a series of months, and it later skims over an entire year.

It isn't that unclear when things are happening because the movie tells the audience by way of superimposed text, but the flow-or lack thereof-leaves a lot to be desired. (One event is later mentioned to have happened in 2006 when I thought it was closer to 2003 or so, highlighting my disconnect from the chronology of events.

) There isn't enough time spent in the first act establishing Megan is a person-we just know that she's a screw-up with trouble connecting with people. It's quite ironic too, since the audience in turn has trouble connecting with her as a protagonist.

Her relationships are also simplified, and the central relationship between Megan and the dog didn't feel fully believable to me, which isn't ideal given that it's the crux of the film and Megan's arc.

Mileage may very from person to person in regards to this, but it felt kind of weak in my opinion. There's both too much and not enough material throughout Megan Leavey, its content towards the beginning and end being much too rushed and the stuff in the middle feeling like filler instead of truly satiating meat.

The parts that do work are by products of the actors' charisma. Mara helps her role seem better written than it is, and she battles through the ho-hum dialogue and drama-which later involves two obligatory scenes showcasing PTSD.

Common is also good in a supporting role as her superior and his charisma helps his scenes a bit, but again, his dialogue isn't very good. However, Bradley Whitford is underused in another supporting role.

As a whole, though, Megan Leavey is both a movie that just isn't for me and also a movie with very noticeable script issues, including but not limited to sudden changes in time and place, uneven pacing, blank characters, and one peripheral character whose existence seems extraneous, even by the eyes of the three screenwriters given how easily and offhandedly they write him out of the film.

It's largely a bunch of fluff, but it just happens to be fluff that also goes woof. 4.6/10, lame, C-, below average, etc.