'Megan Leavey' a touching story about a Marine and her dog
"Megan Leavey" tells the commercially apolitical, fact-based story of a lost soul, a young woman who pulls up from a self-destructive spiral and, through luck or fate, finds her purpose and place in Iraq as a handler of bomb-sniffing dogs in the U.S. Marine Corps.
On top of that, "Megan Leavey" is a pure love story, a twist on Hollywood's traditional "boy and his dog" tale, now about the special bond between a young woman and her K-9 military partner.
This might seem to be an unlikely project for documentary filmmaker Gabriela Cowperthwaite's first dramatic feature. "Blackfish," her hard-hitting 2013 investigation into SeaWorld's abusive treatment of killer whales, amassed so much emotional and political support that eventually SeaWorld agreed to phase out its lucrative killer whale shows.
Cowperthwaite's empathy for noble mammals translates directly into "Megan Leavey."
Before the movie hits its stride as a lean, taut drama of Marine buddies in Iraq, it fumbles through a weak, sketchy beginning using listless voice-over narration to spoon-feed us a short bio of Leavey and her dead-end small-town life.
Leavey, played by an earnest, pixie-like Kate Mara, has no guidance and no support. Since dumping her mild-mannered husband (Bradley Whitford), Leavey's self-centered mom (Edie Falco) has taken up with a spineless man (Will Patton), cutting Leavey socially and emotionally adrift.
She sees a Marines recruitment office and instantly signs up.
"Megan Leavey" hits all the expected notes for a while, mostly with its grueling basic training montage. Once in Iraq, the undisciplined Leavey parties too hardy and gets caught urinating in the bushes on base. Her punishment alters her life, for her sergeant (Common, who makes a convincing figure of forged military steel) orders her to clean the canine kennels for a week.
There she meets Rex, a mean German shepherd she first fears, then, slowly, comes to love. They become a team, quickly dispatched into the field to detect IEDs (improvised explosive devices), mostly roadside bombs.
Cowperthwaite brings the heat during the Iraq scenes, merging her journalistic approach with dramatic devices that imbue "Megan Leavey" with authenticity and urgency. Cinematographer Lorenzo Senatore adds to the doc-like action with handheld-camera shots and a flat, unglamorized patina.
Inexplicably, the screenplay (by three writers) drops into a saccharine finale that could be lifted from any cliched sports drama, but even that can't ding the sincerity of Cowperthwaite's drama.
Leavey's on-base affair with fellow Marine Matt Morales (a charming Ramón Rodríguez) provides some humanizing comedy (he's a Mets fan who can't understand why she follows the Yankees).
But this is first and foremost a story of true love, and it isn't theirs.
During a military counseling session, the facilitator asks Leavey, separated from Rex, what she would say to him if she could.
"I would thank him," she answers, "for teaching me what love is."
Note: Watch for the real-life Leavey as a U.S. Marine boot camp drill sergeant.
“Megan Leavey”
★ ★ ★
Starring: Kate Mara, Ramon Rodríguez, Edie Falco, Common, Tom Felton, Will Patton
Directed by: Gabriela Cowperthwaite
Other: A Bleaker Street release. Rated PG-13 for suggestive material, language, violence. 116 minutes