For Channing Tatum, it was a treat to make his directorial debut with the heartfelt “Dog.”
Tatum stars in the comedy-drama as an Army Ranger tasked with driving an unruly-but-misunderstood military canine from Washington to Arizona.
He and co-director Reid Carolin set out to make a movie highlighting the impact that a dog’s unconditional love can have on a person.
“We just decided that there’s a really interesting opportunity to tell a story of what man and beast can do for each other,” Tatum told the Daily News.
The film, in theaters Friday, was years in the making for Tatum and Carolin, who previously worked together as producers on a 2017 HBO documentary about multipurpose canines titled “War Dog: A Soldier’s Best Friend.”
The duo drew inspiration from their experiences making that project, and came up with the “Dog” story about a man and a Belgian Malinois named Lulu who are separately grappling with returning home from war.
A roller-coaster road trip ensues after Tatum’s Jackson Briggs is instructed to transport the hound through multiple states to her former owner’s funeral.
“He’s just a guy who’s trying to figure out his life,” Tatum said of his character. “He had an expectation to where he was going and what he was gonna do, and that got taken away. Now he’s trying to hold on to that same idea of himself, and then on this road trip, he takes the first step to possibly thinking of something new.”
Lulu, too, is struggling to adapt to peacetime, said Carolin, who is also making his directorial debut.
“Both of them have dedicated their entire adult lives to fighting the war, to being of service to others in a very, very extreme way, and they’re reaching a point in their lives where that’s no longer necessary,” Carolin told The News. “They have to go and become somebody else. They lose their community. They lose their meaning, lose their jobs, and they have to go and fit in.”
The canine character has the same name as Tatum’s beloved pet dog Lulu, who died in 2018 of cancer.
Tatum, known for films such as “Magic Mike” and “21 Jump Street,” said he relished teaming up again with his longtime collaborator Carolin and making a personal movie that he describes as being “really just fully us.”
Carolin, who wrote and produced the “Magic Mike” movies, hopes “Dog” shows that military canines are much more than animals.
“They’re beings. They’re people. They’re brothers. They’re sisters, friends, soldiers,” Carolin said.
“The bonds that these dog handlers have with these dogs, and that we all have with our dogs, really transcend the term ‘animal’ or ‘dog.’ The line is really thin between human and animal, and it’s important for us to highlight that aspect of Lulu as a character. She should be a four-dimensional character. She makes you laugh. She makes you cry. She’s got traumas and attributes of her that need healing.”
The filmmakers also made it their mission to depict the Army Rangers authentically in the movie.
“You don’t want to upset any of the guys that you really respect and love, that have given their entire beings and lives to this job essentially and this way of life,” Tatum said. “You just try to listen as much as you can possibly listen.”
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