Max (2015)

Max is a family adventure picture about a Belgian Malinois who served in Afghanistan, watched his handler die, and came home carrying what the film treats as canine post-traumatic stress. The dog will not eat. The dog will not sleep. The dog lunges at the neighbor who deserves it. This is the movie's central gambit: relocate the wounded veteran from the human body into a four-legged one, then let a sullen teenage boy named Justin coax him back toward trust. It works about as well as that sounds, which is to say the audience at my screening handed it an A while the critics reached for their pens.

The supporting cast is where the film's cultural instincts become legible, though only faintly. Chuy and Carmen are Latino friends who help Justin handle the dog. Sergeant Reyes is a Latino Marine who mails over a training DVD. Emilio is a Latino cartel enforcer. A Black major appears for a scene or two. These characters were not assembled as a statement. They are simply present, which in 2015 counted as a modest courtesy and nothing more. The film has no interest in race as a subject, no interest in gender, and no interest in the economics of the bootleg video game trade that funds Justin's pocket money. It wants to talk about loyalty, sacrifice, and the debt owed to those who serve, and it does so gently, without a pulpit.

The third act delivers stolen weapons, a cartel, an exploding pickup truck, and a bridge confrontation that kills the villain and injures the dog. The moralizing stays soft and familial, the sort that asks us to honor our veterans and be kind to animals, and it never hardens into a sermon. A sequel followed, Max 2: White House Hero, which suggests the franchise understood its own limits and chose to lean into them. For a film with good intentions and a 37 percent approval rating, that is a reasonable legacy. The dog, at least, is excellent.