The Blabbering Inferno: MAX. REVIEWED.

Max (2015)

Rating- PG

Running Time- 1 hour 51 minutes

Directed by- Boaz Yakin

Written by- Sheldon Lettich and Boaz Yakin

A film that has no genre, no real structure, and no idea what it’s trying to achieve yet somehow manages to be quite an entertaining watch. The film is essentially about relationships and, despite all of them being implemented in as clumsy a way as you possibly imagine, they at least give the film some heart, even if it is a horrible synthetic heart made in a lab.

When Kyle Wincott (Robbie Amell) is killed during military service with the US marines, his war dog Max is left to his family after it becomes apparent that he acts in a hostile manner to everyone bar Justin (Josh Wiggins), Kyle’s younger brother. Justin at first is reluctant to accept the responsibility of taking care of Max and struggles to get him to respond to any commands. His attitude soon changes though when he meets Carmen (Mia Xitlali) who, unsurprisingly given her debut scene sees her proudly flaunt a ‘paw’ tattoo and a dog themed bike helmet, is somewhat of an expert at training dogs. This new partnership works wonders and Max becomes as obedient as a dog can be. The film then appears to have got all it can out of that particular story arc so has Justin discover an illegal arms deal so that a new story, that sees Justin, Max and co. become a team of wannabe crime fighters, can begin; a story that takes the form of an unintentional bastardisation of Scooby Doo.

The film struggles right from the outset to find a tone/genre and stick to it. The entire film has a somewhat serious undertone yet takes several guises, most notably as an upbeat coming of age story and a caper-filled crime fighting adventure. Because of this, we are never entirely sure what kind of reaction the film is trying to get out of us and are therefore left struggling to react at all.

The story itself is full of conveniences that completely rids the film of any feeling of genuineness that it may have otherwise had. This is mostly embodied through characters suddenly changing their minds about things without any sort of motivation or reason which comes down to bad writing more than anything else.

The characters, with the exception of Justin, are all very one dimensional and by the end of the film you feel they haven’t evolved in any meaningful way apart from Justin’s father (Thomas Haden Church) who simply decides to act out of character for one moment which eventually leads to him having a major attitude change by the end of the film.

Overall, it is a film that is riddled with problems but at times it manages to still be a fun watch. It could have been much better if it found and stuck to a single identity rather than trying to appeal to multiple demographics through multiple identities; a tactic that almost never works. But, on a positive note, it is probably the second best film with Max in the title that has been released this year so at least it has that going for it.