Alpha Dog

The youth oriented crime drama, Alpha Dog, plays like a pop art parable meant to warn its target teen demographic about the consequences of being bratty and boozy. Unfortunately, director Nick Cassevetes stays a little too long at the party himself and ends up making a film that’s more callous than cautionary.

The movie follows a crew of faux California gangsters as they go about their “hardcore” lifestyles doing small time drug deals in a neighborhood full of wealthy people living privileged lives. Their arrogant leader, Johnny Truelove, (Emile Hirsch) escalates his notoriety by casually hijacking the younger brother of his most recent rival, but must inevitably deal with the looming threat of kidnapping charges. The outcome is bleak and, according to the film, true to the actual decisions of real life thug Jesse James Hollywood on whom the movie is based. It should be noted that although many of his coconspirators have been convicted, Hollywood remains on trial and is technically still to be considered innocent of these crimes.

It’s the dark turns in the final third of the film that make this movie palatable and marginally worthwhile. For the most part, Alpha Dog tries so hard to stave off the severity of its subject matter that it compromises its own dramatic integrity. The bulk of the film is a rancid and unenjoyably vulgar account of how Johnny and his friends buddy up with their young hostage and happily expose him to the world of rich kid parties chock full of drugs, sex, and alcohol. Think Almost Famous remade with no dignity and William Miller recast as a pawn in a drug deal gone wrong.

It takes talented writers, actors, and directors to mold interesting characters out of shallow and obnoxious people. Unfortunately, the cast and crew of Alpha Dog don’t seem prepared to explore this desperate generation of party kids far beyond hazy, stupid shots of coked up socialites. Where we really want to be as an audience is inside the minds of Truelove and his crew, but instead we’re given only a glimpse of their self-important surfaces. The movie makes easy targets out of ignorant parents and silent witnesses to the crime, (which it literally points out one by one) however, we’re never given a look into the motivations of the main characters of the film. There are a few new notes of emotion from the better than you’d expect Justin Timberlake in the film’s redeeming final act, but it’s still not enough to make a splendid movie experience out of a generally sour film.

Grade: B-