Dog Soldiers is the 2002 feature debut of director Neil Marshall, starring Sean Pertwee and Kevin McKidd. The film is about a military unit on exercises in the forest that gets attacked by werewolves.
Marshall has made a pretty big name for himself as an action director with titles like The Descent and Centurion, as well as two epic battle-centric episodes of Game of Thrones. And you can see the beginnings of his style here since the action scenes are really fun. There are rough bits that feel like 90's XTREME, but there's still a lot of great action. And there's a lot of humor in the action which serves nicely to keep things going.
The movie seems built on references. There are characters named Bruce Campbell and Harry G. Wells. Also a "Witherspoon" character nicknamed "Spoon" that seemed to exist so that the line "There is no Spoon" could be used. There is a character named Cooper who could be a reference to the Cooper character in Event Horizon, which also starred Sean Pertwee, though that's a bit of a stretch.
As a final note, the creature effects are pretty damned impressive, relying mostly on suited actors to play werewolves rather than CGI. Towards the end when the faces are focused on more often it gets a little lame looking since the expressions are baked in, but on a whole they're great.
The story got a little weird to follow towards the end when they introduced some twists, but the action sequences were still great fun.
All in all, a damn fine action/horror and a nice chance to see a great action director starting out.
Next up: Red Riding Hood
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