Dog Tags **** (2008, Paul Preiss, Bart Fletcher, Candy Clark, Hoyt Richards, Diane Davisson) – Classic Movie Review 13,465

Damion Dietz’s affecting, nostalgic 2008 American coming of age drama film Dog Tags stars Paul Preiss and Bart Fletcher as a marine recruit and a carefree gay man, the chalk and cheese characters who nevertheless find fertile common ground.

Writer/ director Damion Dietz’s affecting, nostalgic 2008 American coming of age drama film Dog Tags stars Paul Preiss and Bart Fletcher.

Paul Preiss and Bart Fletcher are ideally cast and excellent as a marine recruit and a carefree gay man, the chalk and cheese characters who nevertheless find fertile common ground on their road through life, and Candy Clark makes a whole lot of the sad mother role.

Dietz’s writing is good, with fascinating characters and interesting dialogue, and quite a few twists and turns in the way of plot surprises. Terence Pratt’s  imaginative cinematography makes the most of the scene and the scenery. The warm, retro-style film has a nostalgic, downhome feel like The Last Picture Show and American Graffiti, and it is okay to compare it with them. It pushes, but not too hard, and doesn’t strain credibility, carefully avoiding pushing its luck into a fantasy romance, and finding some other profitable route to go. It is all about decisions: not just planning them, making them, and sticking with them right or wrong, working it through, and working it out.

Despite all Damion Dietz’s hard work, care, thought and intelligence, eventually to comes down to Paul Preiss and Bart Fletcher to make it work. And they do. They create two memorable characters to care about, in a world where hardly anybody cares about anybody else or anything.

Paul Preiss stars as Nate Merritt, who is stuck in bad relationships with his fiancée and mother, and decides to enlist in the marines. He meets Andy Forte (played by Bart Fletcher), a carefree gay man, and the two become soul mates trying to help each other.

Despite their very obvious differences, the two men have much in common, with domineering mothers and live in broken families. Nate’s mother Deb (Candy Clark) is a single mother who hides the real identity of his father Gene (Hoyt Richards) from her son. Andy’s divorced mother Louise (Diane Davisson) is a deluded, over-emotional former actress who quit to take care of Andy and Andy’s son Travis.

Nate is determined to seek out his father, and Andy encourages him. But the man he thinks is his long-lost father is the wrong man. Deb finally coughs up the truth: he is the alcoholic Gene who still lives nearby in a one-room shack surviving on disability cheques and odd mechanic jobs.

Damion Dietz recalled: ‘I was having a conversation with a marine and we were very, very different people and I learnt a little bit about him, his history and background and so this movie was inspired by his story.’

Candy Clark (born June 20, 1947) is best known as Debbie Dunham in the 1973 film American Graffiti and Mary Lou in the 1976 film The Man Who Fell to Earth.

The cast

The cast are Paul Preiss as Nate Merritt, Bart Fletcher as Andy Forte, Candy Clark as Deb Merritt, Nate’s mother, Diane Davisson as Andy’s mother Louise Forte, Amy Lindsay as Nate’s girlfriend Trish Huddle, Hoyt Richards as Nate’s father Gene, Chris Carlisle as Chris, Keythe Farley as Mark Dessau, Barry J Ratcliffe as Uncle Sam, and Grant Harvey as Bapps.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,465

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com