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DOG
SOLDIERS
5/10
UK 2002
: Neil Marshall : 105 mins
There’s nothing
in Dog Soldiers to match the wit of its UK teaser trailer, a pitch-perfect
spoof of the British army recruitment adverts (“what would you do?”)
shown on TV and in cinemas before the start of the main feature. This
feature probably won’t last very long on the big screen before heading
off to take up its proper home on the video shelves. It’s a so-so werewolf
horror with lots of comic relief, and while the humour mostly works just
fine, the shocks-and-scares element is much less effective.
The straightforward
premise pits a rough-and-ready squadron of soldiers against a horde of
ferocious werewolves in a remote Scottish forest. The wisecracking unit,
led by Wells (Sean Pertwee) and Cooper (Kevin McKidd) soon realise they’re
out of their depth, but are rescued by local woman Megan (Emma Cleasby),
who takes them to the nearest farmhouse. As the wounded soldiers wait
anxiously for dawn, they come under siege from the relentless lycanthropes…
Dog Soldiers
is strongest on the relationships between the soldiers – the effective
early stages, when the nature of the foe isn’t clear, have something of
a British Southern Comfort about them. It’s unusual to see this
kind of mordant, unflappable Geordie wit outside the social-realism confines
of an Amber film - apart from Pertwee
and McKidd, the rest of the platoon are all from the director’s native
north-east, and they make the most of their earthy squaddie banter: “I
hope I give you the shits!” snaps one of them as a fanged predator closes
in for the kill.
But while Marshall
can write this kind of hard-boiled barracks-room chat very well, that’s
all he can write. The rest of the dialogue is often howlingly clunky
– and all the worst lines go to the hapless Cleasby. A newcomer to the
films, it’s impossible to tell whether she can or not – even Julianne
Moore would struggle with lines like “Up until today, you believed there
was a line between myth and reality.” During the chaotic finale Marshall
has Megan making a link between lycanthropy and the menstrual cycle –
similar ideas gave the Canadian werewolf pic Ginger
Snaps an intriguing thematic depth, but here they smack of anything-goes
desperation.
The Megan character
– indeed, the whole ‘back story’ provided for the werewolves – makes no
sense whatsoever, and there are plenty of dead patches in the over-extended
running time where the audience can mull over the gaping holes in plotting
and motivation. And while most of the humour hits the target, there are
the occasional sloppy misjudgements – at one point a dog pulls on what’s
meant to be a bloody bandage, but looks more like Wells’ exposed entrails.
The end credits, meanwhile, feature a cheaply mocked-up newspaper front
page with the headline ‘Werewolves ate my Platoon!’
But whatever
Marshall’s limitations as a scriptwriter, he handles the action sequences
well enough – doing effective double duty as director and editor,
although he’ll hopefully avoid using quite so much heavy-handed background
muzak next time. On a technical level, the film transcends its low budget
– the Belgian-Luxembourg Ardennes convincingly doubles for the Scottish
Highlands, and the werewolves, though of course never fully shown, are
surprisingly believable creations. But the cash obviously didn’t stretch
to full-on American Werewolf-style transformation sequences: when
Ryan ‘turns’, he vanishes off underneath a table to do so. Or should we
take it as Marshall’s homage to Carry On Screaming?
2nd
May 2002
(seen 1st May, Odeon Newcastle)
by Neil
Young
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