Sun Dogs is a 2018 comedy/drama about a young man determined to be a military hero, who ends up on a misguided adventure with his family and new friend.
There’s a kind of common acceptance that your basic independent rom-com may be a mix of serious drama and absurd comedy, but almost always quirky. What’s interesting about actor turned director Jennifer Morrison‘s new film Sun Dogs is how that formula is so artfully applied to a film that defies the genre. It’s certainly an unusual experience that treads lightly on an already thin line but is so earnest and passionate about its characters, it finds a way to overcome much that should set it back.
To say the events of September 11th, 2001 had impact on Ned (Michael Angarano) is a wild understatement. In the three years since, he’s dedicated himself to becoming a fighting machine, training and toning his body to be the best possible force it can be in order to join the Marines and take that ferocity to the terrorists. Unfortunately, Ned is not well, as we learn much later, and is locked in a strange sort of fantasy, fueled now by his military dreams. This leaves Marine recruiter Master Sgt. Jenkins (Xzibit) in a yearly struggle of breaking the bad news to the boy in ways he can understand, though, one time, in hopes of at least placating some hope in him, ‘assigns’ him the job of protecting the city, supplying him with a deck of terrorist playing cards. This unintentionally puts Ned on the tail of casino owner Sameer Singh (Nicholas Massouh), thinking him a high level target, and who is also his boss. Employing the help of young, nearly destitute prostitute Tally (Melissa Benoist), they take to the task of saving the world.
The first hurdle is of course, 9/11, which by its nature is a taboo topic for comedy. Morrison, working from a script by Anthony Tambakis, begins her film with familiar images of planes hitting buildings and for most, it will certainly trigger some concerns. However, the film deftly tiptoes around this with due respect, never painting Ned as the joke but as a genuine problem, even if the things he does inspire some laughs. He has limited memory skills and uses index cards to keep track of his thoughts, surrounding himself with patriotic paraphernalia, tucking himself away in his dark room where he rehearses tirelessly to get through the recruiter.
In all this are his parents. Ned’s mother Rose (Allison Janney) is circling in her life, taking care of her son while somewhat feeding the fantasy by encouraging him to keep trying while his stepfather Bob (Ed O’Neill) sits on the sidelines, unsure what is right, watching The Deer Hunter over and over with his stepson and secretly gambling at the casino. He’s an out of work trucker putting his hopes on a settlement that might never come, leaving Rose to wonder if it’s time for her to move on. However, the movie is more about the relationship between Ned and Tally, the two paralleling each other with misdirected existences, though much of the film’s greater weight comes from Rose and Bob.
Sun Dogs could have really stumbled with much of its premise as Ned and Tally commit to their surveillance of a truly innocent man, which opens up many cans of worms that the film steers clear of. Juggling the mental issues, tattered lives, and homeland security end up being almost too much for the film to handle, winding it down to an ending that isn’t all that satisfying as it skirts authenticity for fantasy. Still, genuine performances and a well-made debut for Morrison make this a solid recommendation.