It’s no big mystery why Disney would all but bury The Dog Stars, with a late-summer release pushed back from the spring, minimum advance fanfare, sparse press with the stars, no U.S. red carpet premiere and a misleading trailer, which looks like a million other post-apocalyptic thrillers that have ceded ground to more exciting TV, like The Last of Us and — at least in its early seasons — The Walking Dead. The movie is minor-key to a fault, and some no doubt will call it underpowered, yet it’s arguably Ridley Scott’s best since The Martian 11 years ago. Now 88, the prolific director has not lost his taste for explosive action, but those bursts are cushioned here among more reflective drama.
Adapted by Mark L. Smith (The Revenant, Twisters) from the well-received 2012 novel by Peter Heller, the film has the feel of a melancholic, character-driven Western, rather than a shoot-‘em-up survivalist thriller — even if it is punctuated by sequences of that nature. That makes it a long shot to satisfy short-attention-span consumers of brawny action, but more mature audiences open to a vision of the dystopian future in which bleakness and savagery are countered by human compassion and hope should check it out.In keeping with the throwback feel, Jacob Elordi leads with introspective movie-star magnetism that evokes the heyday of Kevin Costner, while cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt’s panoramic vistas — locations in Italy’s Alpine foothills and the mountains of the Abruzzo and Lazio regions are majestic stand-ins for Colorado — lend the unhurried but engrossing story a restorative grace. As Paul Greengrass showed in the under-appreciated News of the World, old-fashioned isn’t always a negative.
