Christopher Heyerdahl

Togo, Disney+ review: the heart-swelling tale of the most heroic dog who ever lived

• Dir: Ericson Core. Cast: Willem Dafoe, Julianne Nicholson, Christopher Heyerdahl, Michael McElhatton, Michael Gaston. U cert, 113 min Cometh the hour, cometh the Siberian husky. Togo – one of the Disney productions to land straight away on their new streaming service, Disney+ – is a biopic of a pooch, but no ordinary pooch, and a better-than-ordinary film, too. Time magazine voted for this noble sled-dog in 2011 as the most heroic animal in history. With his owner, Leonhard Seppala (Willem Dafoe), Togo led an emergency mission in 1925 across 264 miles of frozen waste, to save the children of Nome, Alaska from a diphtheria epidemic. If this tale sounds vaguely familiar, you may have heard of Balto, the more famous dog involved on the final furlong of the same serum run, who scooped up all the credit by crossing the finish line, and was made a front-page celebrity around the world. Well, the way this film tells it, Balto (who ran a mere 55 miles with his own team) wasn’t fit to lick the underside of Togo’s mucky paws. The film toggles back and forth between the mission itself – a breathtakingly hazardous enterprise – and Togo’s early years as a pesky pup who keeps digging his way out of confinement.