Thanks to the #1 movie rule that you can NEVER kill the dog and the popularity of the John Wick series (where our favorite headshot shooting, judo master kills scores of people to avenge his dead puppy for four friggin movies), it’s no surprise that eventually we would have movies about a jaded hero stopping a nothing to avenge his Best Friend. Unfortunately, RLJE’s latest film Muzzle pales in comparison to the more popular puppy revenge movie.
LAPD Cop and former Marine Jake Rosser (Aaron Eckhart) patrols through the streets with his K-9 partner Ace. They are a good team, to the point that he endlessly tells the dog about his experience in Iraq (from which he has PTSD but is still hired by the force) as he goes about his day. Everything changes when he his unit is called to go after a perp through Skid Row. In the aftermath of a shootout, Ace is shot. In a fit of rage that the paramedics are assisting other cops shot and bystanders, Jake attacks the paramedic. And since this is an age where everyone makes sure to pull their camera phones out (to record the police (and for good reason if you watch the headlines), which lands him in hot water.
In trouble with the LAPD brass, Jake is ordered to do some downtime, see a therapist, and interact with other human people (causing him to start dating his neighbor Mia (Penelope Mitchell)), and to get back in the swing of things by getting a new K-9 partner. His new partner is Socks, a dog with literal titanium teeth that needs to be better trained. After all, if a god has titanium teeth, they are either an anime character, or something is really wrong with them! He trains under his K-9 training boss Leland (Stephen Lang), and slowly but surely develops a bond with Socks.
Of course, he is still on a one-man mission to get vengeance for Ace. And of course, his bosses tell him to stop going rogue. Of course, the person he’s chasing is not some low-level gang member, which leads him to uncover a vast conspiracy involving dogs, drugs, and corruption within the city as well as internationally. And for Muzzle’s hour and thirty-nine-minute runtime, we are treated to… a lot!
Muzzle comes across like a Fox News viewer’s fever dream. First off, it seems like EVERY street in LA in Muzzle is overflowing with the homeless. Now I know Los Angeles has a homelessness problem, but for goodness sake, they had graffiti on the side of an LAPD building with homeless people hanging outside of it!! This film was clearly made by someone who reads the worst possible headlines and applies it to the whole city. Homelessness, check. Cartels, check. Fentanyl, check. The Chinese being involved, check. This movie won’t entertain as much as it tries to use propaganda to tell a certain type of narrative. Now do these things happen? Sure. Do they happen like this? Absolutely not!
Aaron Eckhart does a decent job to try and elevate Muzzle from its B-movie status. After all, he’s freakin Harvey Dent and has had countless other great roles, but he is saddled by the script of Muzzle to basically just be angry the entire movie. In addition, Muzzle wasn’t sure what type of movie it wanted to be. Was it about grief? Was it about getting back into the world? Was it a revenge thriller? Was it a conspiracy movie? Was it a Right Winger’s fever dream? Maybe all of the above! It needed to pick a theme and stick with it for the film to be coherent.
Now was Muzzle all that bad? There are some fun dog action as Socks’ titanium teeth do get some action, and Aaron Eckhart has one action scene that actually belonged in John Wick. But overall, Muzzle simply was plagued by narrative confusion and just abruptly ends when there should at least be five to ten more minutes in the film. Muzzle had potential, but overall it needed to cook a little more.
Muzzle is currently available in select theaters and available On Demand.
