Scary So-Cal youth crime, sordid and all too true
Alpha Dog is true-crime stuff set in a So-Cal suburbia populated with tattooed rich boys, teenage vixens, drug-dealing dads, and a couple of stupid, deadly thugs.
Alpha Dog is true-crime stuff set in a So-Cal suburbia populated with tattooed rich boys, teenage vixens, drug-dealing dads, and a couple of stupid, deadly thugs.
Written and directed by Nick Cassavetes, and based on a sordid tale of abduction, murder and international flight involving the improbably named FBI most-wanted-listee Jesse James Hollywood, the film belongs in the same category as Bully, Mean Creek and River's Edge. You know: the kids-do-the-dumbest-things genre.
Emile Hirsch stars as Johnny Truelove (the Jesse James Hollywood role), an enterprising junior gangsta with a crib, a pool, and a posse of errand boys and hangers-on. He also has a dad (a convincing little turn from Bruce Willis) who served as an exemplar role model: a self-employed "businessman" with a fat bank account and a bunch of shady connections.
When one of Johnny's clients - Jake, a trip-wire weirdo played by Ben Foster - fails to come up with the deal money he owes, Johnny decides to kidnap Jake's half-brother and hold him hostage until payment is made. At first, the 15-year-old Zack (Anton Yelchin) doesn't know what's going on - he just gets to hang with these really cool dudes and foxy babes. And then, even when he does find out he's Ransom Boy, Zack doesn't mind; he's having such a good time, and Johnny's friend Frankie (a mega-tattooed Justin Timberlake) seems to have taken him under his wing.
It's all a game.
And then the game gets really, really ugly.
Cassavetes, taking a sharp turn from his hit studio romance, The Notebook, dices the film in hopped-up, edgy rhythms that seem to match the attention spans of its subjects. There's more voyeurism going on here, and less insight into a certain culture (the young and the wasted), than the filmmakers would probably admit to, but the performances are scarily real, and the outcome, well, is just scary.
Alpha Dog **1/2 (out of four stars)
Produced by Sidney Kimmel and Chuck Pacheco, written and directed by Nick Cassavetes, photography by Robert Fraisse, music by Aaron Zigman, distributed by Universal Pictures.
Running time: 1 hour, 57 mins.
Sonny Truelove. . . Bruce Willis
Frankie. . . Justin Timberlake
Jake. . . Ben Foster
Olivia. . . Sharon Stone
Zach. . . Anton Yelchin
Parent's guide: R (profanity, drug use, strong violence, sexuality, nudity)
Playing at: area theaters
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