Everyone loves animal movies, which explains why those Disney nature documentaries continue to do big business every year. And lots of people love patriotic war movies from Pearl Harbor to the present day. All of which makes Megan Leavey, the true story of a female Marine K-9 instructor and her bomb-sniffing dog, practically a foolproof project. However, director Gabriela Cowperthwaite, star Kate Mara, and some remarkably talented canines make this movie one of the better war movies and one of the better animal movies in recent years.
The movie does take some liberties with the story of the eponymous Megan Leavey’s life. Here, Megan (Mara) is portrayed as a post-high school screwup who winds up enlisting in the Marines (against her parents’ wishes) more or less to get out of a hostile home environment. Her misadventures continue in the Marines, where she is given a punishment detail that requires her to clean out the kennels where handlers and their dogs are being trained for duty in Iraq. The most disagreeable dog there is Rex, whom Megan feels is a kindred spirit. She decides to apply for the K9 Corps and winds up as Rex’s trainer.
Megan and Rex are sent to Iraq, where she spends the first few months of her tour guarding checkpoints, at which Rex inspects suspicious vehicles for weapons or explosives. Eventually, she is sent into the field with a unit on patrol. She and Rex help clear a minefield, but the mission turns into an ambush when insurgents trigger an explosive device near the two of them. They are both wounded but survive. Megan returns stateside where she eventually leaves the Marines after her tour of duty ends. Rex, on the other hand, is sent back to Iraq and later Afghanistan with a new handler.
Megan soon learns that trained dogs like Rex are often euthanized after they become too old or infirm to perform their trained duties. She volunteers to adopt Rex, but a Marine veterinarian has determined Rex to be too vicious and unstable to be adoptable, for fear the dog might lash out at someone in public. Megan makes it her personal calling to adopt Rex, finally going to Senator Chuck Schumer for help.
As long as Megan Leavey sticks to the true story of Megan and her dog, it’s an excellent movie. Director Cowperthwaite is uniquely qualified to tell this story, having previously directed Blackfish, a documentary about killer whales in captivity, and produce a TV documentary series set in Iraq. She gives Megan Leavey a sense of documentary realism, whether it’s in the early part of the movie featuring time worn scenes of grunts struggling in basic training, which is given a relatively new twist by portraying the struggles through the eyes of a female recruit, or in the combat itself.
Of course, any movie about the various explosive devices used against American troops in the Iraq war is going to be judged against the high standard of the Oscar-winning Hurt Locker, and Megan Leavey holds up surprisingly well in that regard. Few wars have placed American troops in such incredibly stressful situations in which they had to interact on a daily basis with a potentially hostile civilian population. On the one hand, an itchy trigger finger could cost innocent civilian lives and make the political situation much worse, but on the other, one mistake in thinking a child or elderly person is harmless could lead to American deaths. Megan Leavey shows just a part of what the real-life Megan went through during two separate tours in Iraq, but it’s about as gripping and tense a half hour of footage as most viewers will see all year.
Unlike many animal movies, Meagan Leavey does not inundate the audience with cutesy shots of the animal and “tricks” whose only purpose is to amuse by showing silly behavior. As one of the officers (played by Common) in the film notes, “They aren’t pets. They aren’t even dogs anymore. They’re warriors.” As a result, other than the scenes involving training or combat, Rex mostly sits or lies down, admittedly with the endearing expression most dogs have, but otherwise stoic. So, it’s up to Kate Mara to sell the bonding sequences, and she manages to do so very well by using Rex as the perfect sounding board for what she’s able to vocalize about her frustrations in life.
Mara’s character definitely has frustrations, starting with a problematic home life. As the scene below demonstrates, her loving father (Bradley Whtiford) is a largely unavailable workaholic, but her mother with whom Megan generally stays is mostly self-centered and callous, and Megan doesn’t forgive her for ending the marriage. The rest of Megan’s life is soap operatic of sorts but not nearly as troubling as the filmmakers might believe. Megan is supposed to be a screw-up, but she adapts well to the military and the mistake that lands her in trouble isn’t a product of rebellion but of a drunken full bladder that leads to her peeing outside a headquarters building while walking home from a night partying while on leave.
The movie does a much better job of showcasing Megean’s problems after she leaves the service. She clearly is suffering from PTSD, but the disorder is not portrayed in the over-the-top manner that usually shows up in movie. Megan doesn’t become catatonic or have hallucinations or violent fits; instead, she simply has trouble putting the war behind her, and she feels that adopting Rex will help her do so. The film makes a statement about the trauma many Iraq and Afghanistan war vets suffer without exploiting it for cheap commercialism.
In fact, Megan Leavey itself eschews the cheap commercialism that would have bee easy to fall victim to in the hopes of making a more marketable movie. The attempts to embellish Megan’s personal life, such as by incorporating a romance with a fellow trainer, seem to fall flat when juxtaposed with the tense suspense of the war scenes and the genuine drama of Megan’s stateside struggle to adapt Rex. Those sequences give the movie its power and authenticity and make it one of the better films of its kind. Although Rex is now dead, the real life Megan is apparently doing quite well now (and has a cameo in the film as one of Mara’s drill instructors). This film is a fitting tribute to two real American heroes.
