MEGAN LEAVEY – Review

Kate Mara stars as Megan Leavey in Gabriella Copperthwaite’s MEGAN LEAVEY, a Bleecker Street release.

MEGAN LEAVEY is a true story-based drama about young woman whose close bond with a dog changes both of their lives. Although the young woman is a Marine serving in Iraq and the dog is her bomb-sniffing teammate, this really is a touching dog story rather than a war story.

Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s moving but flawed film is based on the true story of Iraq war veteran Megan Leavey and the German Shepherd explosives-detection dog Rex with which she worked. If you are a soft touch for true-story dog tales, this one’s got your number. Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite has previous experience telling a compelling animal story, as the director of BLACK FISH, the award-winning documentary about captive orcas.

Making a nice transition to narrative feature films, Cowperthwaite tells a different kind of “girl and her dog” story, in which the “girl” is actually a troubled young woman Marine struggling to find her footing in life and the dog is no sweet pooch but a military dog with talent for detecting explosives but a terrible temperament. The story follows the two as they meet in basic training and serve in the Iraq War together searching for IEDs and other explosives. The bond they form carries on into civilian life.

Although the film takes place in the early years of the Iraq war, the film has nothing to say, positive or negative, on the war, and focuses solely on Megan and Rex’s story.

This film is a touching feel-good tale of finding one’s self through an animal companion. In 2003, Megan Leavey (Kate Mara) does not join the Marines out of a sense of patriotism – she is running away from her unhappy life, just like countless men who have joined the military throughout time. Megan feels she has no place in the world and no reason to stay where she is. Her best friend just died, her parents are divorced, and she doesn’t get along with her mother (Edie Falco), with whom she lives in upstate New York. More than that, Megan just doesn’t seem to get along with people in general.

In the military, she does no better, and is constantly in trouble. One misdeed earns her punishment cleaning kennels for the K9 unit. There Megan is intrigued by the work of the dog handlers and the bomb-detection teams, and begs to be transferred there. When she finally gets her request, gruff but supportive sergeant Gunny Martin (Common) assigns her to another misfit, a dog no one can handle named Rex. It’s not love at first sight, but Megan has found her mission and she sets her mind on winning over the big dog. When they are deployed to Iraq, Megan and Rex become an unbreakable team, in the military and beyond.

Kate Mara’s restrained performance is low-key but it seems to suit this difficult, troubled woman. The focus is on Megan’s story, and her emotional progress and personal growth as she learns to work with, then trust her canine companion. Her relationship with the dog helps her to improve her ability to interact with her own species as well. Megan gets some help working with Rex and understanding her upcoming role on the battlefield from a kind-hearted, battle-tested fellow dog handler played by Tom Felton. She even finds some romance with another dog handler Marine played by Ramon Rodriguez, but the real relationship at the center is the interspecies platonic one between Megan and Rex.

Cowperthwaite’s film hits the right emotional notes, is well-paced, and avoids the over-sentimental while being moving. On the surface, MEGAN LEAVEY looks like a war movie but it really is not. It is a dog story, about the love between this one woman and her dog. It is more a story set in war, in the vein of the World War I tale WAR HORSE.

Although this is a true story, it is hardly complete picture of either the war in Iraq or women’s experience in the armed services. In fact, the film says next to nothing about the Iraq War beyond Megan’s own personal experiences. Although Megan and her dog prove themselves on the battlefield in Iraq, the film really has nothing to say on the war itself, negative or positive. A television in the background of a scene as Megan announces she has joined the military sets the time as 2003 by showing Colin Powell testifying about Saddam Hussein and “yellow cake.” Beyond setting the time period, it is about the only reference to a reason for the war. The men treat Megan like any recruit, and in Iraq, where she is the only woman in the deployed canine unit, she faces no great difficulties beyond skepticism about her ability to do the job. She never gets more than a few grumbles and leering looks, none of the kind of harassment and worse that women have reported enduring. Instead, this is just Megan Leavey’s own personal experience. This determined lack of commentary in a film set in a conflict still going on seems unsettling, and certainly will bother some viewers.

MEGAN LEAVEY is best when it focuses on Megan and Rex, the warm, winning human-animal story at its center. It is foremost a personal story, about the bond between a woman and her dog and how they rescued each other and found a purpose in each other.

RATING: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars