7 Dogs

It's kind of interesting to see 7 Dogs hit American theaters a week after Unidentified; they've got very little in common aside from having "Saudi Arabia" as the first country listed under "Country of Origin" on IMDB, and sort of represent the two poles of a film industry, especially one that is very new: Unidentified is almost all homegrown talent, topical, and has a genuine sense of place (even if that's not a KSA most outsiders would recognize); 7 Dogs has local screenwriters but pretty much everyone else hails from outside the Kingdom, and it is at least partially built for export, with big action that needs no translation and plenty of guest stars that might, say, get a Boston-area computer programmer to go "Giancarlo Esposito and Monica Bellucci? Interesting!"

And, don't get me wrong, a country trying to stand a film industry up from nearly nothing needs both; the local crew probably learned a lot from their Belgian directors and the rest of the international crew's department heads, for example. Also, a large part of the value of the film industry to Saudi Arabia is not just making films for international consumption, but to forge international partnerships. There are some big action sequences here - the poster boasts the largest explosion ever staged for a movie and it just may be the case - and I suspect that this is a bit of a calling card. Movie production is a relatively new industry for Riyadh, but they can work at blockbuster scale.

The result, though, is that it's kind of a weirdly generic movie. It's perhaps trading in cliche, but there were many more ladies wearing head coverings in the audience (and, coincidentally, ripping my ticket) than on-screen; heck, I think the only time Claire & Jessica are wearing something like a hijab is when they are in India. Truth be told, if I hadn't seen Unidentified last week, I might just think that my impression of Saudi culture was a bit out of date, but the two movies seem to take place in different countries. It's possible that Khalid's home life is actually in Egypt, where most of the Middle-Eastern/North African cast is from and where most of the region's movies are made, but the movie appears to be deliberately vague on these points.

Which does sort of get to the question of what KSA is trying to accomplish here; are they looking to present a much more liberal image than reality, compared to Unidentified which is arguably aspirational in its presentation of a community that seems to be moving fitfully in the right direction. It also raises the question of what to make of the Western/Indian stars who took what I presume what was a pretty nice paycheck for the amount of work they did; I've got no interest in boycotting Giancarlo Esposito the way I can easily ignore the mostly-odious stand-ups at the Riyadh Comedy Festival, even before rationalizing that I consume a lot of media from China.

Also, this was excluded from A-List at AMC, and only played matinees, which looks like a four-walled release (especially since there wasn't a distributor logo up front; it sure looks like the KSA's General Entertainment Authority is paying to have it in American theaters). That lack of really good showtimes was probably why the 5:30pm show on Sunday had pretty good turnout, largely MENA and youngish, enough to make me wonder how much this is an underserved demographic in Boston, especially considering it's late June so there aren't that many foreign students around. It makes me wonder (a bit) if we'd be seeing more Egyptian movies had Regal not closed Fenway during the pandemic, or if this has established enough of a market for us to see more Saudi and/or Egyptian movies in the future.


7 Dogs (aka El Kilab El Sabaa)

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 28 June 2026 in AMC Boston Common #13 (first-run/four-wall, DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)

7 Dogs is an odd beast, with MENA-Belgian filmmakers directing mostly-Egyptian talent, but with enough Saudi money to hire a bunch of reasonably-familiar Western and Indian talent to get it global attention, although they seem to be booking American theaters directly rather than hooking a distributor. The result is a big action movie that can seem both idiosyncratic and oddly generic, though I must admit to not being familiar enough with Egyptian films to know how this fits that mold. Like a lot of these movies, it's got some pretty good bits but is looking to play to a broad enough audience that it's not much more.

It opens extremely in media res, with Interpol agent Khalid Abazzazzi (Ahmed Ezz) arresting gangster Ghali Abu Dawood (Karim Abdel Aziz) on a jet where a firefight has already killed the pilot and depressurized the cabin, with the plane flying upside down for good measure. Ghali is taken into Saudi custody when they land, and Khalid transfers to desk duty at the behest of his fiancee Rabab (Hana El Zahed). A year later, Rabab and Khalid's mother Nesreen (Hala Sedki) are butting heads over wedding preparations when Khalid is called in for an urgent assignment: The international "7 Dogs" gang is looking to start moving a massive amount of designer drugs into the Middle East, and the only person who can help them track them down is Ghali, who will only talk to Khalid. Thus begins an attempt to track down the other Dogs, who don't even share their identities with each other, a trail that will lead to Beijing, Mumbai, and Las Vegas - but is Ghali co-operating, or is he trying to use Khalid and colleagues Claire (Tara Emad) & Jessica (Sandy Bella) to track down rivals?

Directors Adil El Arbi & Bilall Fallah, credited as "Adil & Bilall" as per usual, have made some stylish movies on a smaller scale in their home country of Belgium and were notably the directors of the Batgirl movie that Warner Brothers decided to write off, but the obvious comparison is to the two most recent Bad Boys sequels, with the mismatched partners, larger-than-life action sequences - it boasts of having some of the largest explosions in cinema history on the poster - and broad jokes about how these guys who can handle the most life-threatening situations at work are kind of helpless goofballs faced with proper procedure or relatively reasonable requests from the women in their lives. They handle all of it with varying degrees of aplomb; they tend to do the sort of flashy virtual camera work zooming through bullet holes (in glass and skulls) or stitching together action on multiple floors that look a bit more fake (but maybe more consciously cool) because they don't quite have an A-list effects budget, and their stunt team does some slick fighting when necessary. It's that kind of movie.

I gather the two leads are big stars in Egypt, and it's not particularly hard to see why; Ahemd Ezz is a handsome and charismatic sort who can come off as kind of square even in the midst of action, and Karim Abdel Aziz does well to find the line where Ghali is kind of goofy and likable but also clearly amoral and a criminal. Tara Emad & Sandy Bella are pleasant enough as the other parts of the team, but the script doesn't give them a lot of chance to establish separate personalities and skill sets; they're there because this sort of movie needs people to handle sniping and tech and have some extra bodies running around in the big action sequences.

The "guest stars" are pretty good, by and large. I do kind of wonder if they reached out to anyone from China or Hong Kong for the Beijing segment, but Max Huang is probably younger and more agile than anyone folks would recognize. Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt fit in well when they hit Mumbai, although Martin Lawrence plays a bit much like him doing a cameo. Monica Bellucci is solidly ruthless and charming even if her segment drags a bit (the script is suddenly trying to do way too much at this point), and they save the best for last with Giancarlo Esposito, who has the juice to show up late, be a threat, but also for in with the light tone.

The ultimate vibe is odd - it kind of feels like Middle Eastern Bad Boys with a noticeably (but not drastically) sub-Bruckheimer budget, and for something where large pieces are set in Riyadh, it doesn't really give the place a personality. That's not all bad, in that for all that I was kind of bracing myself for Saudi propaganda, Adil & Bilall probably spend more time telling us how great Belgian chocolate is. It's not bad, for what it is, and the giant explosions do deliver as advertised .