Ridley Scott's post-flu thriller reaches Portuguese cinemas on Thursday
The Dog Stars, released here as Na Companhia das Estrelas, adapts Peter Heller's novel about a world emptied by a pandemic. Jacob Elordi and Josh Brolin share an abandoned airfield.
Ridley Scott is 88 and still makes two films in the time it takes most directors to make one. The next reaches Portuguese screens on Thursday, released here as Na Companhia das Estrelas by NOS Audiovisuais.
It is a return to science fiction without ships or empires. The film adapts The Dog Stars, Peter Heller’s 2012 novel, set after a flu virus has wiped out most of the population. Hig, the central character, flew light aircraft before the world ended. He now lives on an abandoned airfield with his dog and with Bangley, a suspicious ex-marine who guards the perimeter and depends on him as much as he depends on Bangley.
The cast
Jacob Elordi plays Hig, Josh Brolin plays Bangley. Around them are Margaret Qualley, Allison Janney, Benedict Wong and Guy Pearce. Mark L. Smith wrote the screenplay, as he did for The Revenant, which is a fair clue to the register: enormous landscape, very few words, sudden violence.
Scott has described the film as a matter of drama, fear and terror, which from the director of Alien and Gladiator reads less as a genre promise than as a description of method. The official film page sits on the 20th Century Studios site.
What else opens the same day
Thursday is busy. Coyote Vs. Acme, animation’s most delayed lawsuit, opens too, and the extended cut of the first Harry Potter is still running. Between a man with a dog on an airstrip and a coyote with a lawyer, August ends better than it started.
By Lucy Bennett
Image: 20th Century Studios
