Megan Leavey: A Good Boy or Dog Crap?

Alright, I'm going to be honest with you guys: I had no intention of seeing this movie. I was going to the theater with my friend, under the assumption we were seeing Cars 3. When he texted me, "Do you want to see Megan Leavey," I just assumed Meg was a friend of his. Nope! Now, with that out of the way, let's get into it.

Megan Leavey stars Kate Mara, Tom Felton (Malfoy!), Common, and Ramon Rodriguez. It is directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite and tells the true story of Marine corporal, Megan Leavey (Mara) and her incredible bond with her military combat dog, Rex. Going into this movie I had no idea what to expect. I heard of it and saw TV spot, but other than that, I was completely oblivious. There was a creeping suspicion though that this would turn into a Lifetime movie, just full of cheesy moments. I'm here to say that I'm genuinely surprised with how good this movie was.

Let's start with the positives, and trust me there is a lot. The most important thing in a movie like this is how believable the bond is between the actor and the dog. If that doesn't work then we might as well just get up and leave the theater. The bond Kate Mara has with this dog is incredible. Every moment they were on the screen together, I was happy. It felt like a genuine relationship. Oh and the acting is really good too. Before seeing this movie, the only Kate Mara movie I had seen was that abysmal Fantastic Four and after seeing this, I see why people praise her. She is completely believable as a soldier, unlike other movies where they are just cartoons. One thing that was pretty surprising to me was that there was some humor in the film. I thought that it was going to be this brooding movie the whole time, but I found myself laughing quite a bit. One final thing I would like to touch on is the suspense. There are two or three sequences where Rex is sniffing around for explosives. In each of these scenes, my heart was just pounding in my chest. It was very well done.

Now, let's talk about the negatives. The first act, for me, felt a bit rushed. We first see Rex and he is extremely aggressive towards Megan Leavey. They have a few scenes together and poof! it seems like they're buddy-buddy. If the relationship between the two wasn't believable enough, I would give this more flak, but since it is beautifully shown how attached they are to each other for a majority of the movie, I'll let it slide. There was also a little romantic subplot which could've been tossed. I saw this movie with a friend who knows pretty much everything about the military and he was disappointed with how nice the Sargent (Tom Felton's character) was. Felton does a great job in the movie, but he was a little too nice for a Sargent. I don't know if it was because this movie was PG-13 so they had to tone it down a bit or if it was something else. Again, these are tiny complaints.

Overall, Megan Leavey was a really good movie. Best of all, it surprised me, which is rare for a movie to do nowadays. It had some hiccups, but all-in-all, it was an emotional, well-told story. I would give this movie an 8/10