Starring Jacob Elordi, Margaret Qualley, Josh Brolin, Guy Pearce, Allison Janney, Benedict Wong
For a filmmaker still cranking out movies in his late 80s, each new Ridley Scott project feels like a gift, even if they're not always worth treasuring. His latest, the dystopian sci-fi drama The Dog Stars, embodies all that makes his current run so fascinating. No other filmmaker working today is capable of delivering such an incongruous blend of meticulous polish and unvarnished junk — often in the same scene.
The story centres on a mechanic and pilot named Hig (Jacob Elordi), a heavy-hearted survivor of a catastrophic viral outbreak. With humanity decimated, Hig and his four-legged companion Jasper comb the cities and towns of Colorado for food, gas and medicine, which he distributes to people in need. He often butts heads with his partner Bangley (Josh Brolin), a trust-no-one survivalist who made it through the apocalypse by shooting first and asking questions later.
Yearning for something more than lasting another day, Hig embarks on a mission to follow a faint radio signal to Grand Junction, CO, potentially one of the final bastions of civilization. Before reaching Grand Junction, his plane goes down in the mountains, leaving him alone and exposed. Hig's bleeding heart may be his downfall as he's forced into survival mode, encountering weary survivors and evading hordes of feral cannibals roaming the woods.
The Dog Stars rehashes so many dystopian clichés it feels like a video game adaptation of a franchise that never existed. It's gorgeous and atmospheric, at times feeling more like The Last of Us than The Last of Us. It also relies on Days Gone's heavy-handed survivalist themes, with a dash of Fallout's unhinged camp.
Every detail, from the costumes and cinematography to the production design, is meticulously rendered, but in terms of performances, dialogue and pacing, Scott paints in broad strokes. It's as if he's laser-focused on a concept or set piece, and then yada-yadas past the small stuff to get to the next thing that piques his interest.
The episodic story structure and wonky pacing will leave impatient viewers tapping their feet. But when things do finally kick off, we witness a master at work. Action sequences hit with all the visual sizzle and teeth-rattling intensity expected of the filmmaker behind Prometheus and Black Hawk Down. And the last 25 minutes of the film take an off-the-wall turn that shows glimmers of the go-for-broke dystopian thriller The Dog Stars should've been all along — Allison Janney's all-too-brief turn as Darlene is worth the price of admission alone.
It's the relationship between Hig and Bangley that reveals Scott's current filmmaking motivations. He descends into the post-apocalypse to explore ideas about living, surviving and seeing humanity in "the other." Bangley survived a cataclysmic virus, but with his closed-off heart, he's never lived a day since the world ended. Hig recognizes existing isn't the same as living and that, in his world, the price of feeling alive means risking everything.
Much like Hig foraging through the scraps of civilization, Scott's filmmaking, at times, struggles to pull together all the necessary pieces. At 88, he's running out of runway, less concerned with perfection than sharing a piece of his heart with the world while he's still able. Every frame of The Dog Stars conveys Scott's passion, and on fewer occasions, his legendary precision.
