2006 crime drama written and directed by Nick Cassavetes.
Jake Mazursky owes Johnny Truelove some money, but when he tries to pay a part Johnny rejects him saying he wants all the money, Jake feels offended by Johnny and decides to break in and shit in the Johnny's house, something that eventually leads Johnny and his friends to kidnap Zack, Jake's stepbrother, who is only fifteen years old.
Alpha Dog is based on the true story of the kidnapping of Nicholas Markowitz in 2000, a story about impulsive decisions, and how pretentious behavior, idiocy and fear lead to destructive courses of action.
Nick Cassavetes, the same director of John Q. and The Notebook, makes a really entertaining and relatively thoughtful film, in which the plot improves in development to a powerful climax and a quick resolution.
It features a cast full of famous actors, the reason I decided to see this film in first place, in which Bruce Willis and Sharon Stone have scenes in interview mode inserted at the beginning and end, although their participation is totally complementary, since the main characters are Emile Hirsch, known for films such as Into the Wild, The Girl Next Door and Speed Racer, as the alpha guy, and who makes the weakest performance of the film; Justin Timberlake as his friend in one of the best performances of the film beside Ben Foster, who plays a junkie version of Edward Norton's character in American History X and older brother of the character played by a young Anton Yelchin, and finally appearances by Harry Dean Stanton, Amanda Seyfried, Olivia Wilde, Amber Heard, Lukas Haas, Chris Marquette, Shawn Hatosy, Heather Wahlquist and former professional boxer Fernando Vargas. Most of them do very well in their small roles.
The movie includes songs like Eva Cassidy's version of Over the Rainbow or Eminem's Say Goodbye Hollywood, which is really cool when you take into consideration that the real name of the character played by Emile Hirsch is Jesse James Hollywood. Yes, because even though the movie is relatively close to the real events, the names of the characters and locations were changed to prevent legal problems.
A curious thing is what happens with Ben Foster's character, seems like the character is wasted in the final part after promising interesting things, but another course of action means altering the facts of the story, and depending on when, its final conclusion too, nevertheless I imagine what Tarantino would do with the final part of this story.
Alpha Dog remains almost all the time, except for one scene, in a light and trivial tone, like the behavior of the characters in his story, as it walks towards tragedy.
Let me know in the comments what you think of the film, and if you haven’t seen it yet, let me know if you’d be interested in seeing it or why you’d rather see something else.
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