Muzzle - K-9 Narcotics Unit

The film story is pretty good apart from a pretty odd and under-sketched villain, but what is distracting is the poor quality of the dialogue.

It's a combination of badly recorded dialogue, likely with a lack of options, and amateur use of dialogue cleanup software.

In this case, ADR would have been better to replace the bad parts.

ADR is replacing on set dialogue with new dialogue recorded later in a studio or custom spaces to replicate sets after the film has been shot. If ADR isn't done well, it sounds terrible. The actor has to be good at it, and importantly, the dialogue sound engineer needs to know how to deal with it to make it sound like it was recorded in the environment we see on film.

For a feature, it's a time consuming process and you have to pay the actors more, so perhaps they didn't have the money for it on this film?

Sometimes directors don't like ADR, which is common. In this instance, hire a better sound recordist!

To explain the 'lack of options' term above, there are usually at least 2 microphones used to record actors lines. One is the boom which is often suspended over the actors heads, the other is the Lav which is hidden on the actors body as close to the mouth as possible.

Sometimes sound recordists stuff up Lav mic placement and all you get is scrapes and bumps from the clothes ribbing on the mic and the Lav recording becomes mostly unusable. You are then left with only the boom mic recording.

In noisy environments, boom mics can pick up as much background sound as dialogue, which is a pain and hard to edit. Here, digital audio cleanup software comes into play, and gets used to remove the background noise. If digital cleanup is done badly, you get the kind of dialogue quality which is present within too many shots in this film.

That sometimes has to be a bad dog - well no pun intended. Aaron really is the ... (Eck)hart of the movie (I probably should have used that as summary headline). That said, he has quite the supporting cast - you can look up the names yourself. If you have a heart (not gonna use his name again ... for this review at least) for pets/animals, you will find a lot to like here. Unless you are a cat person I reckon, but that is a different topic to discuss.

The story is good and the suspense is high - I would say that the story is predictable overall, but you will still find yourself on the edge of your seat ... waiting for what happens next ... knowing or not knowing almost does not matter. I assume most will invest themselves in this - especially if they know what the movie is about and what they are about to get ... can justice be served? Being right morally and in the eyes of the justice system may be two pair of shoes ... if that does not give you paws to think about ... (I had to, sorry not sorry)

IN A NUTSHELL: The story is about a cop whose canine partner gets killed in the line of duty. After losing his dog, Jake Rosser plummets deep into a sinister underworld to uncover the truth about who may be responsible.

The film was directed by John Stalberg Jr, who also wrote it with Carlyle Eubank.

THINGS I LIKED: I've been a fan of Aaron Eckhart for years, and I usually like all of his movies, so I was interested in seeing this one. The movie is a study that shows how both his character and the dog are muzzled by past traumas.

I also really like Stephen Lang as an actor. His characters always look like they have a long story to tell about their background.

The movie shows a very ugly side of what's happening in America now. The streets are filled with homeless people in tents surrounded by garbage and worse things. The story takes place in Los Angeles which, sadly, has turned into a complete dumpster fire of a city.

The color palette of the film is dirty and grimy, perfectly representing the filthy underworld the movie is about.

You'll learn some German words because cops speak to their canine partners in German! I've heard that German Shepherds are one of the smartest dogs.

There is a suspenseful scene with some action that utilizes very interesting camera angles. Well done.

The ending is really sweet.

THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE: The love interest is odd. The woman is a nurse with her own set of emotional baggage, so it's weird that she would be interested in an infamous, violent cop who has shown zero warmth toward her when they first met. She basically throws herself at him, vanishes for the majority of the story, and then shows up at the end of the movie with almost no more interaction with the cop.

The final villain looked like a cartoon character.

TIPS FOR PARENTS: Profanity, including F-bombs We see prostitutes, crazy people, and druggies on the streets An explosion kills people Violence Blood A variety of weapons are used Cigarettes and alcohol use We see people get killed in various ways.

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I do have a soft spot for these type of movies... Channing Tatum's "Dog" was surprisingly good, I thought "A Dog's Purpose" was good also. I mean, Turner and Hooch set the bar (or should I say "stick"), it's a classic. I think the less said about K-9 the better. It seems an element of comedy helps these movies build the relationship between man and his would-be best friend. Here though, it's out and out drama with not much in the way of levity to break up the doom and gloom.

I think this started out well but the point where it really needed to start drawing you in to whatever the endgame was, it didn't. Aaron Eckhart did a decent job but I think was let down by the watered-down, John Wick-esque, murky underworld that he was tasked with infiltrating and ultimately toppling. A real lack of a crescendo with the final confrontation being somewhat absent of any real, ahem, 'bite'.

This movie only starts to become really suspenseful, gripping and action packed after some 45 minutes, so beware the real rewarding suspenseful part of this movie is only firing up during the second half.

But this movie has enough to offer in the first 45 minutes as well, because everything (direction, photography, editing, soundscore, dialogues, characters) are of SOLID quality. I really appreciate it so much to see a movie like this, made with an abundance of craftmanship.

The first 45 minutes are firstmost a subtle character portrait of an introvert, aggressive cop (terrific role by Aaron Eckhart), struggling with his inner demons. When his dog gets shot he desperately wants to find the dogkiller, but while investigating he stumbles upon the most dangerous drug cartel.

Slow start, bleak and supsenseful final. Terrific acting performance by Aaron Eckart. Solid direction.

Probably best suited for an arthouse movie audience, because this is defnitely NOT a fastpaced gungho action picture, but much more a slowburning, psychological character portrait of a cop, struggling with his inner demons.