MEGAN LEAVEY: Not The Sappy Dog Movie You Think It Is
It’s really difficult to make a good movie that’s based on a true story – especially when that true story happened just a few years ago. Not only does the creative team set out to entertain people and get a message across, but they also want to respect and remain faithful to the real-life events.
This usually results in a movie a little too bloated to really portray how awesome the actual story is. The script ends up too thinly stretched over the protagonist’s whole life, instead of letting the story drive the movie (we’ve seen this happen in Sully, American Sniper, and a few others). While Megan Leavey can’t quite buck this trend, its best moments do make it worthwhile and fairly enjoyable.
What does Megan Leavey do right?
There are basically two types of war movies. There’s the Saving Private Ryan type, where people get their arms blown off, others go insane, and main characters die awful deaths. Then there’s the Top Gun type, where sure, some bad stuff happens, but the tone is more lighthearted and everything feels “cleaner.”
Both types can be great when executed correctly. But in general, the Top Gun movies don’t quite capture the “realness” of war (seeing as I have never been to war myself, I guess what I mean by that is that the Top Gun movies don’t capture the image of war that the Saving Private Ryan movies have given me). Anyways. What I’m saying is, I really didn’t expect Megan Leavey to get as real as it did. I thought it was going to be a Top Gun war movie.
There are really only three “war” scenes in Megan Leavey, but they are all incredible. For a few minutes here and there, the movie drops its clunky dialogue and cheesy musical cues, and blindsides the audience with some legitimately tense, gripping war scenes.
It’s a good thing Megan Leavey nails these scenes, and not just because they pump up the audience’s collective adrenaline for a few minutes. These scenes also set up for some more realness down the road (that I also wasn’t expecting).
Touching on Megan’s (Kate Mara) PTSD after her deployment was arguably the best part, and unarguably the most important part, of Megan Leavey. Way too often, we see these calm, cool, and collected protagonists do, see, or experience something horrific – then walk away from it, still calm, cool and collected. Sure, it’s fun in a lot of movies, but we know that’s not really how people work in real life.
So it’s refreshing to see Megan Leavey acknowledge its protagonist’s post-war issues with some subtlety and nuance. The movie doesn’t focus on it too much, which is fine – it simply mentions Megan’s PTSD as part of a larger story.
Like I said earlier – if the war scenes had been too clean, the PTSD scenes wouldn’t have landed. Both of these areas where Megan Leavey excels complement each other perfectly, lending some heavy material to an otherwise feel-good plot.
What does Megan Leavey do wrong?
After a cliché-ridden opening monologue and a decent backstory, Megan Leavey opts for short training montage over a full-blown, slow boot camp storyline. Things like this are usually a sign that the movie knows what it’s about, and it’s quickly moving the story along to get to the important stuff.
That is most definitely not the case here. The real reason Megan Leavey moves the story along is because it has no idea what it’s about, and it’s in a rush to cram in as much as it can.
Between the training, the actual combat, the shoehorned-in romance, the PTSD scenes, the family drama, and oh yeah, the relationship between Rex and Megan… There’s just too much going on to form a coherent, well-paced story.
Don’t get me wrong – Megan Leavey certainly hits the mark in a few of these areas. But unfortunately, the bad parts undo most of the progress made by the good ones. Whenever it feels like the main storyline is really about to get going, the movie takes us on a detour of bad dialogue, forced romance, and basically any other thing that happens to be going on at the same time. It’s disorienting, and it takes away a lot of the movie’s momentum before we get back to the meat of the story.
The shotgun approach is especially damaging for Megan Leavey, seeing as all the emotional payoff scenes depend on the audience buying the bond between Megan and Rex. All of the incoherence takes way too much time and focus away from that relationship, so these scenes aren’t nearly as powerful as they could have been.
That’s almost a fatal flaw. The Megan and Rex relationship is really what this movie is all about. And the disappointing lack of focus means the last ten minutes (in other words, what the entire movie builds up to) falls a little flat.
Conclusion
If you clear away a few superfluous, unnecessary scenes, there’s a pretty good story in Megan Leavey. It ultimately nails a few moments you weren’t expecting it to, almost making up for its lack of focus and unwillingness to commit to its main storyline.
That’s enough from me – what did you think of Megan Leavey? Did you buy the bond between Megan and Rex? Let us know in the comments below!
Megan Leavey was released on June 9, 2017 in the US. For a list of full release dates, see here.
Does content like this matter to you?
Become a Member and support film journalism. Unlock access to all of Film Inquiry`s great articles. Join a community of like-minded readers who are passionate about cinema - get access to our private members Network, give back to independent filmmakers, and more.
