First off i love the old 80's & 90's buddy-cop Dog movies like James Belushi's Classic K-9 (1989) (which is one of my all-time favorite films since the video days) & it's direct-to-video 90's sequel K-911. But I'm not bothered about Hanks' Turner & Hooch as i felt it was abit too sad. But i also really liked Chuck's go at it with his 90's Top Dog & then that little Cop & Dog sub-genre seemed to die out.
Of course K-9 (1989) is the greatest dog cop film of all-time.
Then i saw the dvd cover of MUZZLE & instantly i was excited to check it out because it looked like one of those buddy-cop dog films i grew up loving.
MUZZLE stars Aaron Eckhart (the guy that was excellent as Harvey Dent aka: Two Face in The Dark Knight) & has Starred in many films including Paycheck, Olympus has Fallen, London has Fallen, I, Frankenstein, Battle: Los Angeles, In The Line of Duty The Core & many more, as a very rough & ready K-9 unit cop named Rosser, that starts to uncover a mystery surrounding his dog partners death. His original partner Ace is shot dead & Rosser loses it & that's the start of this dark & moody movie about loss, loneliness, anger & vengeance. There's actually a lot under the surface of MUZZLE, maybe a bit too much as not all of it is fully explored.
At the heart of MUZZLE is the fact dogs are real partners to cops & they mean as much to them as a human partner & This movie definitely captured that.
Aaron Eckhart seems to be revitalising his Career as a B-movie Action Star with lots of action-thriller films being released straight to dvd with his rugged face on them.
Eckhart is a capable actor with intensity & a hurt & bitter look in his eyes like a man that's seen it all & lived. So Aaron is great in this role as a tormented man that seems very lonely & very lost. His character is Jake Rosser & is a Los Angeles K-9 cop with a past in Afghanistan as a soldier that has seen it all & lived.
PTSD & a very gritty & apocalyptic looking LA are on show here in this serious thriller. Eckhart is great as he navigates his way around skid row of a very downtrodden underbelly of Los Angeles where drugs & homelessness are everywhere. The film looks great for a lower budget production & Eckhart is great on screen (although the role could've easily have been played by Thomas Jane & been just as good as their both so similar & both good actors) & his new dog partner he gets named Socks is a good actor for a dog. You see Eckhart's bitter & angry cop gets a new dog partner that has been through hell too, so both cop partners are messed up emotionally & have to learn to trust each other & get on. But the mystery of the film is abit weird & not fully explored or explained, in detail anyway. There's a new drug on the dirty, gritty downtown streets of Los Angeles & apparently Socks the dog was the crime syndicates property for sniffing out drugs or something? Or for testing drugs on? I'm not totally sure but it wasn't good either way. The bad guys of MUZZLE are never fully explored or really seen so we don't get that cool old school cop genre trope of having an awesome bad guy that our hero cops are tracking down. Some of the scenes & dialogue feel disjointed & unfocused properly. I feel there's alot cut from the movie but it didn't speed things up because the film is a slow character drama most of the time & definitely doesn't have enough action in it. There's a cop character that is an asshole & really dislikes Eckhart's cop but suddenly & surprisingly decides to help him near the final showdown at the end? That's bizarre & unexplained.
There's a nurse that seems to really fancy Eckhart that lives in his building & the relationship feels weird & there's no real chemistry at all.
Stephen Lang (Don't Breath 1&2) has a nice little part as an LAPD K-9 trainer.
At times i got glimpses of that K-9 movie feel i love, like when Eckhart is chatting to his dog in his car whilst cruising around Los Angeles but again its never fully explored to be fun & doesn't last long. I think MUZZLE wanted to be a more very serious police drama about the relationship between a police man & his police dog & in that case the film does it well but its just missing some more action sequences & a proper bad guy & better supporting characters.
Aaron Eckhart does his best with a low-key grumpy & depressed performance & he does act well. It was good to see him have to go to a psychiatrist to sort his head out as tough men never really seem to open up so those scenes are actually very important in todays mental health awareness times. Eckhart is on a mission to find out who killed his partner dog at the beginning of the movie & why? But seems no one is interested in helping him & worse is his superiors think he's losing it so he sets out to investigate on his own terms & time. There's typical cop genre tropes scattered throughout but done in more serious tone & it's definitely Eckhart that keeps the whole thing together.
MUZZLE is a decent little cop drama/thriller but don't expect old school cop action like i did because its disappointing in that way but good as a dark character piece.
I will watch it again & hopefully pick up bits i might have missed.
MUZZLE is a good watch & a decent cop film & is the very rare type of buddy-cop dog film you don't see anymore, it's a K-9 movie updated to our modern times & yeah i did like it even if it wasn't as good as i thought it could've been.
