Director: Ridley Scott
Stars: Margaret Qualley, Josh Brolin, Jacob Elordi
It’s easy to take for granted that Ridley Scott had an established career in advertising before he put his name to The Duellists in 1978 and changed course to the one we know. He’s always been a populist director, even a businessman, picking and choosing projects with their potential financial success in mind. Perhaps it’s no surprise that his vision of a post-apocalyptic America is winsome and nostalgic for products and corporations over anything else. As supposedly-depressed survivor Hig (Jacob Elordi) flies his old Cessna over a rewilded Denver, Hozier’s ‘Like Real People Do’ gets a lump in it’s throat over Taco Bell. Pizza Hut. McDonald’s. The purpose of his trip into ‘dangerous’ territory? To pick up a case or two of Spite and Coca-Cola for the survivors he likes. Back at the airfield with curmudgeonly ex-marine Bangley (Josh Brolin) they play cards for stacks of dollars rendered meaningless. The relics that the characters of The Dog Stars cherish are capitalist markers, hollow and syrupy.
Based on the book by Peter Heller, Scott’s latest comes off of the back of a rocky run; a cluster of quickly released films from which only The Last Duel has managed to stand scrutiny. Unfortunately, this effort is weaker and wispier than all of them. While not as worthless as his last career low, 2014’s Exodus: Gods and Kings, it’s the least satisfying since; a meandering and oddly cosy end of the world saga with no real direction to it, one that often feels as though it’s half-heartedly picking over ideas presented with better accuity elsewhere. Scott the producer may have seen the commercial success of the TV adaptation of The Last of Us and wondered how he could get in on that action. His chosen material – adapted for the screen by Mark L. Smith – is featherweight and listless.
Having lost his wife Melissa to the flu-like plague that has decimated the world’s population, Hig bumbles about in the vicinity of Erie, Colorado, helping out a community of Mennonites and keeping Bangley company with the aid of his faithful pooch Jasper. With no future to think about he toys with suicidal ideation, dreaming of crashing his plane into the flat side of a Telluride mountain, though nothing about Elordi’s demeanor particularly sells this fantasy as serious. Partly because Hig is so hopeful. Hearing intermittent radio chatter out of Grand Junction, Hig becomes convinced there’s a better world still out there, and takes to the skies solo to find out.
This is perhaps the film’s biggest – only? – tension; between Hig’s optimism and Bangley’s defensive pragmatism. The latter sees only a fool’s errand in the younger man’s adventure, preferring to hunker down and shoot any oncomers on sight with his arsenal of pilfered weaponry. This sort of brings us to the movie’s weirdest, unexplained element. The year is 2035. Not much time has passed following this COVID-like armageddon and the majority of people that we meet are recognisable as such. No one is still sick. So why exactly are there teeming packs of zealot Warboys from Mad Max roaming the landscape? They mainly feel like stand-ins for Native American raiding parties, and The Dog Stars just a displaced Western flung out of time. Swap Hig’s plane for a horse and you’re basically there.
On his amiable adventure Hig befriends father/daughter duo Pops (Guy Pearce) and Cima (Margaret Qualley). Cima, also a widow of the virus, becomes the predictable, tentative love interest and they both have the guilt of the past to reckon with. Pops offers one of the films few mild surprises in that he doesn’t get killed within 20 minutes of being introduced so that the tortured lovebirds can be alone. In fact, The Dog Stars isn’t keen on letting go of any of it’s human stable. The only significant loss of the film is the one most shrewdly chosen to tug on the heartstrings.
With so little impetus or story, oddities and inconsistencies have time to settle in the mind. Why are digital ads still working (other than to perpetuate Scott’s mourning for marketing)? Doesn’t petrol deteriorate after six months or so? How has Hig managed to get an iPod classic to last all this time when I couldn’t get one to stay functional for more than 3 years? Is there still an Apple Store? Most incongruous of all is what he finds at the end of his journey; an obvious swerve from the source material that’ll revive lost attention, sure, but which tips itself the second Sam Spruell starts grinning like Willem Dafoe in Wild at Heart.
The Dog Stars coasts, somewhat, on the is-this-it? incredulity of everything. Brolin chews the scenery well enough that his parts of the movie are close to fun, but mostly it’s a dull-as-ditchwater trudge through the scenes skipped over in more exciting material. If the devastated world is so awful and Hig’s grief so inconsolable, why do we have twee, cheery kids flocking to greet him like Railway Children hooked on lemon and lime sodas? There’s no tonal consistency and a reluctance to explore the lead character’s supposed dark void. Nothing is demanded of Elordi, and so little is given by him. The blood spatters of enemies diced by Hig’s propeller just feel jarring when most of the time we’re one scene away from a campfire rendition of ‘Kumbaya’.
Still, all those handsome aerial shots will probably help sell a lot of TVs.
The Lost Highway Hotel 