Butler's Cinema Scene

Marcello Fonte

“DOGMAN” My rating: C+

110 minutes |  No MPAA rating

In the opening scene of “Dogman,” the dog groomer Marcello (Marcello Fonte) is attempting to shampoo and dry a fierce pit bull.

Keeping just out of range of the chained beast’s chomping fangs, Marcello calms the monster with baby talk. (“Hey, Cutie-Pie. Hey, Sweetie.”)

Turns out he’s a lot better with animals than his fellow humans. It figures…little Marcello looks like nothing so much as a sad-eyed chihuahua.  And he’s got the timid personality to match.

“Dogman” comes to us from director Matteo Garrone, who had an international hit with 2008’s “Gommorah,” set in Southern Italy’s criminal underworld. This latest film is also about crime, albeit the unorganized kind.

Marcello, who is divorced and devoted to his young daughter, is an inoffensive sort. Which may explain why he is so routinely exploited by Simone (Edoardo Pesce), a hulking thief, coke addict and hair-trigger brute.  Simone is always pulling his little buddy into some sort of criminal enterprise, and Marcello is too weak  to refuse.

They reside in a seaside slum that may once have been a modern housing project but which how has succumbed to rust and mold. To one degree or another the men in the neighborhood subscribe the the traditional form of toxic masculinity; poor Marcello desperately wants their recognition and approval.

So rather than inform on Simone, he does the “noble” thing, taking the rap for a robbery he didn’t commit. He’s sent to prison for a year.

At which point “Dogman” develops a case of fleas.

Marcello emerges from jail a changed man.   Not that we see what went on behind bars…his first day in stir is followed immediately by a shot of him back on the street.  We just have to accept that he underwent a toughening process on the inside.

But are we to believe that he is now tough enough to kill?  Sorry, despite Fonte’s solid performance, this plot development doesn’t really wash. We’re left with an unearned  directorial statement that doesn’t track emotionally.

You can say this for “Dogman,” though…Nicolaj Bruel’s cinematography is astoundingly beautiful even though there’s not one pretty thing to look at.  Just great photography.

| Robert W. Butler