My favorite thing about Dog 51, the Parisian future-thriller from Cédric Jimenez, is how anti-futuristic it feels. The setting is the year 2045, some twenty years into the future, yet it could be tomorrow for all we know. Apart from some showy technology that still simmers with recognizability, there's little in Jimenez's vision that believes anything will get better in the decades to come.
It's a breath of fresh air in a genre that often leans heavily on tropes of flying cars and hologram UI's that have been "just around the corner" since the 80s. With the way the world is going, it's far more likely we'll have the same crap with worse style, as the enshittification continues to expand.
Apart from that, and one delightfully bizarre part where our heroes take a breather to sing karaoke, Dog 51 is a frustratingly disappointing film that refuses to do anything interesting with the wealth of material at hand. Instead, it goes for an obvious mix of Blade Runner and I, Robot, where the procedural elements feel hackneyed and dated instead of the timelessness it aims for.
The focus is on two cops, Zem (Gilles Lellouche) and Salia (Adèle Exarchopoulos), operating out of vastly different districts, but forced together by the murder of a high-ranking government official who created the AI surveillance state controlling Paris. It doesn't take long to clock the archetypes: Zem is the "out of line, but not wrong" type, while Salia knows the rulebook by heart. They don't like each other at first, but you can probably guess how long it takes before they really do.
This isn't a bad thing, either. Films like Dog 51 live on archetypes and genre clichés. What matters is how they use them, not if. In fact, it's thanks to the effortless chemistry between Lellouche and Exarchopoulos that Dog 51 even works for the most part. Their icy bickering that slowly thaws into something resembling a bond is easily the most compelling part of the film.
The problem is that Dog 51 doesn't trust its instincts when it comes to the narrative. It starts with a terrific chase sequence in Paris, where the ruthless use of AI and drone warfare sets the police force apart from the boots-on-ground Salia, whose vision of policing is far removed from the shoot-first-ask-questions-later approach of her peers. When we meet Zem, it's easy to appreciate his rule-bending for the greater good, and Lallouche plays the gruff jerk with a heart of gold well.
But when the mysteries start to pile up, and the central investigation moves away from the worldbuilding, Dog 51 loses steam quickly. The twists are both obvious and baffling, sometimes all at once. At one point, it feels like things happen just so we can get a scene the filmmaker wants to play around with, but has no idea how to lead us there more naturally.
Sometimes, that allows for wonderfully bizarre French touches, like the aforementioned karaoke sequence; at others, it leads to an unearned climax that had me rolling my eyes so hard I worried they'd leap out of my skull.
If Dog 51 allowed itself to have more fun or push harder into the oddball antics, I think it would buy itself more leeway with the clunkier elements. Back in the 90s, French moviebrats like Luc Besson and Vincent Cassel had plenty of fun inserting their off-beat sensibilities into familiar genres to great effect.
Jimenez hits some of the similar notes, yet pulls back just as things start to get interesting. The result is a frustrating mix of disparate styles and tones that never connect in a meaningful way. There's a lot to admire in Dog 51, but not as much to like.
