7 Dogs Movie Review: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
7 Dogs is a high-energy, globetrotting action film with impressive stunts and enjoyable star cameos, but its thin story and underdeveloped characters keep it from being more than a fun, forgettable spectacle.
Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Language: Arabic, English
Genre: Action, Crime, Thriller
Runtime: 2 hours 5 minutes
Directors: Adil El Arbi, Bilall Fallah
Cast: Ahmed Ezz, Karim Abdel Aziz, Monica Bellucci, Salman Khan, Sanjay Dutt
7 Dogs wastes no time announcing exactly what kind of film it is. It opens with a wild action sequence aboard a plane that is seconds from crashing, as Interpol officer Khalid Al-Azzazi, played by Ahmed Ezz, and criminal Ghali Abu Daoud, played by Karim Abdel Aziz, somehow manage to save the aircraft together.
That opening basically works as a trailer for everything that follows: big stunts, international locations, and barely a moment to catch your breath.
Khalid is ready to leave fieldwork behind and settle into a quieter life with his fiancée. That plan does not last long once a dangerous new drug called Pink Lady starts spreading through an international crime network run by a secretive syndicate known as the Seven Dogs.
Khalid is pulled back in for one final mission, and to make things more complicated, his only real lead is Ghali, the very criminal he once arrested. The mismatched cop and criminal partnership is a familiar setup, one Bollywood and Hollywood have both used many times before, but 7 Dogs gives it a genuinely global stage to play out on.
With the syndicate’s members scattered across different countries, the film becomes a globe-hopping chase, and that structure ends up being one of its biggest strengths.
Each new location brings a different flavor of action, and the sequence set in China, involving a character named Lee Chang, is where the film really finds its groove. Set to an iconic Cantonese song, the action here has a genuinely playful, flamboyant energy that lifts the film from simply loud to actually entertaining.
Directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, known for their work on the recent Bad Boys films, clearly understand how to make action feel fun rather than just mechanical.
Ahmed Ezz carries a lot of that weight himself, bringing real charisma and physical presence to Khalid, and he looks completely at home amid the film’s increasingly over-the-top set pieces. There is also a nice comic touch running through the film, like a scene where Khalid’s fiancée calls him mid-gunfight, more concerned about wedding venues than the fact that he is fighting for his life.
For Indian audiences, the big draw is undoubtedly Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt. Their screen time is frustratingly brief given the buildup around their appearances, but both actors make the most of what they get. Salman plays Johar, a close aide to Khalid, bringing his usual effortless swagger along with a genuinely amusing auto-rickshaw chase.
Sanjay Dutt plays Ranjeet, a criminal in the film’s India segment, leaning into a more action-heavy, menacing role. Their scenes together are among the most fun in the film, especially a strange but memorable bit where they fight while filming themselves on a selfie stick like vloggers.
Monica Bellucci also stands out as Giulia, the elegant and controlled syndicate boss, bringing a welcome change of pace to a film otherwise dominated by testosterone-fueled action. It is also worth noting that the film makes real space for women in its action sequences rather than sidelining them, which feels like a refreshing touch for the genre.
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Where 7 Dogs stumbles is in its writing. The film tries to weave in emotional threads, Khalid’s complicated past involving his father, Ghali’s family, and Khalid’s upcoming wedding, but none of it is given enough room to actually land.
The story clearly wants you to feel something but rarely slows down long enough to earn that emotion. Characters exist mostly to move from one action set piece to the next, and by the second half, the plot becomes fairly predictable and repetitive.
Still, the sheer momentum of the film works in its favor. With so much happening across so many locations, there is rarely time to get bored, even if there is also rarely time to genuinely care. The desert set climax, packed with dust storms, gunfire, and explosions, delivers exactly the kind of spectacle the film has been promising all along.
In the end, 7 Dogs is not a film you will think about long after leaving the theatre, but it is an enjoyable enough ride while it lasts, driven almost entirely by scale, star power, and relentless action rather than any real depth.