Channing Tatum stars with, and directs, a good Dog

Yet within these contours, there are some pleasantly unpredictable misadventure vignettes where Briggs and Lulu encounter various oddball Americans, the film maneuvering nimbly to avoid both melodrama and broad comedy. And while giving a performance that never ventures too far outside his personal hunk-goofball-soldier Venn diagram, Tatum turns out to be one half of a solid directing team.

It’s clear early on that Tatum and Carolin’s filmmaking will rely more on unfussy chops than easy heartstring tugs. A couple of simple expositional phone call scenes play without a cut, allowing the camera to capture extra details of Briggs’ life that won’t need to be explained further. (Would it be stretching to call these scenes Soderberghian?) Perhaps most impressive, Tatum and Carolin manage to stage a later scene around that lowliest of cinematic emergency buttons, the dog reaction shot. During a potentially emotional reunion, Briggs leaves Lulu in the car, and the movie follows him to the doorstep of someone else’s home. Before the confrontation can play out, Tatum and Carolin cut back to Lulu, waiting in the car, and what the dog sees—her human friend silently leaving the confrontation, rather than acting out a scene the audience could probably write themselves—is heartbreakingly effective.

Dog is hokier and softer-hearted than Magic Mike, its old-fashioned respectfulness less skeptical (and also less lively!) than that canny critique of hustler capitalism. But there are some connections to be drawn between the two films, both of which address the Tatum character’s fraught relationship with his own body. Haunted by persistent migraines (and not, mercifully, by boilerplate combat flashbacks), Briggs tries his best to push through the pain with ranger-level bravado. He’s not much good at taking care of a dog because he’s not much good at taking care of himself. The death of his friend, who clearly had similarly untended problems, hangs over the movie, even when it’s offering canine antics like Lulu screwing up her temporary master’s attempt to gild the lily by masquerading as a blind veteran toting an adorable dog.

Not groundbreaking stuff. But as a whole, Dog is credible as a small-scale drama with some moments of light, puppyish comedy, from the man and the mutt. Like Clooney before him, Tatum hasn’t quite made his own Soderbergh movie. He has, however, made a surprisingly good one.