The Dog Stars: The end of the world could use more Josh Brolin

On paper, there is very little to complain about. Josh Brolin, who has been Thanos and made Sicario significantly more unpleasant. Jacob Elordi. Margaret Qualley from The Substance. Guy Pearce from Memento and L.A. Confidential. And behind the camera stands Ridley Scott, the man who gave us Alien, Blade Runner and Gladiator. Talented actors, beautiful people, a huge production machine and a world that has ended. I honestly rarely ask for more.

Elordi plays Hig, who has lost his wife and now lives near an airfield with the dog Jasper and the survivor Bangley, played by Brolin. Hig flies out for supplies in his little Cessna. Bangley makes sure visits stay short. It is a practical arrangement, as long as you are not the one paying a visit.

And damn, it looks gorgeous. The plane glides over landscapes that almost make the collapse of civilisation look like a win for the tourism industry. No queues. No other guests. Slightly awkward access to medical care. Scott can still make a human being, a plane and a mountainside look like something you would happily spend two hours with.

It is just not quite the same as actually filling those two hours.

The film's best idea is standing right in front of us: two men who survived the same catastrophe and got completely different things out of it. Hig is a tormented soul searching for a reason to go on. Bangley looks like a man who has finally organised daily life exactly the way he wants it. The world has ended, yes. But there are also far fewer people around to have opinions about his life.

On a very limited and hopefully non-clinical level, I can relate to that. There is something tempting about a life where the tasks of the day are concrete, and none of them begin with having to turn something over in a meeting.

Brolin is excellent in the role. The anger, the suspicion and the almost offended reaction to Hig's need for other people give the film both edge and personality. There is a whole story in watching that man try to understand why his partner absolutely must go and ruin a well-functioning arrangement with hope.

The dynamic is just a little unevenly distributed. If I had to put a number on it, Brolin delivers about 75 percent of the pleasure I get from the pair. Elordi has the grief and the searching gaze, but I miss more resistance in the interaction. I buy that Hig hurts inside. I also occasionally feel like saying that we get it, and that he can go sit in the plane now.

When the radio signal sends him off, the film opens out into a larger journey. We meet more survivors, new environments and other ways of building a life after catastrophe. Margaret Qualley's Cima and her father, played by Guy Pearce, become part of the story, and of course love shows up too. Even after the end of the world, apparently nobody is allowed to mind their own business.

The romance has its fine moments. I like the idea that the longing for closeness survives everything else. But the development also becomes rather banal. The film is in such a hurry to move us along that I barely get to feel the relationship grow before I am expected to be invested in it.

That is a recurring problem. In 118 minutes, The Dog Stars wants to hold grief, friendship, love, survival and a bigger journey through humanity's sad leftovers. There is material here for several films, but the individual stories are given too little room. I am led into an intriguing setting, just manage to think that we could happily stay here a little longer, and then we have to move on.

The result is paradoxical: a film that feels both overcrowded and slow.

When the action sequences finally arrive, though, everything wakes up. Watching Brolin work with a sniper rifle is exactly as satisfying as you would hope. There is weight, overview and brutality. I do not always have a very clear sense of who the enemies are, beyond the fact that they very much want to hurt our protagonists, but in the moment itself it works.

On the other hand, the surprises are often announced well in advance. When someone is handed hand grenades, I do not sit there wondering whether they will matter. I am waiting for the payoff. And the story of the faraway place where everything may be better is by now so familiar that suspicion comes along the moment the destination is mentioned.

I also miss the world around them having more impact. The virus does not need a medical explanation, but the catastrophe often feels like a beautiful backdrop, even though it ought to be felt in everything the characters do. The film has so many interesting possibilities that it becomes frustrating how quickly it leaves them behind.

And then there is the title. Jasper takes up a lot of space, and the connection between the dog, Hig's loss and the starry sky is clearly meant to give the story a poetic anchor. I understand the idea. I just do not really feel the meaning the film wants me to place in it. For me, the dog and the stars become yet another layer on top of a story that already struggles to decide what it wants my attention to go toward.

So what?

The Dog Stars is the perfect hangover film if you have been at a nightclub until five in the morning, wake up at four in the afternoon and need something with a bit more substance and a lot more firearms than Gilmore Girls. There are lovely images, good actors and action that deserves you sitting up a little straighter on the sofa. But I would have swapped several of the detours for more time with the two men at the airfield. I came for the end of the world and ended up missing Josh Brolin's daily routine.