DOG-gy Style

The opening credits of ALPHA DOG couldn’t be more calculated to annoy the piss out of me if the film-makers had read my mind. I’ve complained before about films that open with faux home movie footage that purports to show our world-weary protagonist back when he or she was just a sweet, innocent child, but what makes it doubly grating is that in this instance, such footage is underscored with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and they’ve found a cover version that’s even more lugubrious and syrupy than the original. And after all that, and seeing the whole movie, I still have no clue exactly which character we’re watching the young version of in the crappy home movie footage. At least it’s not shot on fake super 8.

But I forgive Nick Cassavetes and company, because I enjoyed the rest of what transpired. Imagine a Larry Clark movie minus the constant alarmism, given a decent script and competent actors. I know, it’s tough. But the shorthand version is lots of young attractive people drinking forties, smoking joints, saying “fuck” a lot, and fucking a fair bit. Plus there’s a plot. And the movie makes fun of their dumb-ass-ness without being all, “These Are The Youth Of Today — BE AFRAID!!!!” What it does is identify, with on-screen titles, every single peripheral character who will later be called as a witness, thereby indicating just how reckless and stupid these delinquents are in their planning.

Mostly, I should point out before going any further, ALPHA DOG contains one of the most boneriffic scenes I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing in a long time, and no, Justin Timberlake isn’t involved. A 15-year-old kid who has been kidnapped encounters two slightly older girls at a party who think it’s totally hot that he’s being held for ransom, and they proceed outside to the pool, where a game of naked Marco Polo turns into a threesome. It’s way too much of a male fantasy to be exactly what happened in the true story the movie’s kinda-sorta based on, but regardless, ‘tis a thing of beauty. Even though it fades out too soon. Oh, and one of the girls in question is that one ditzy character from MEAN GIRLS who isn’t Rachel McAdams.

Here’s a taste…

The Alpha Dog in this picture is Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsch), son of a legitimate gangster (Bruce Willis), who deals large amounts of drugs, and generally acts like a character in a gangsta rap video, arrogantly pushing people around and physically assaulting those who don’t come through for him. One of those is a speed-freak self-loathing Jew who sports tattoos of both Hebrew characters and Nazi symbols, a dude named Jake Mazursky (Ben Foster), who, in the movie’s second-best scene, gets fired from his job when he fails to convincingly act sober.

Jake doesn’t have all of Johnny’s money. Johnny beats Jake up from behind. Jake fights back. So now…It’s on! Jake trashes Johnny’s house and shits on the carpet. Johnny kidnaps Jake’s brother, Zack (Anton Yelchin). Thing is that Zack, who hates his all-American home life, enjoys being kidnapped and living the thug life he’s always imagined that his big bro enjoyed.

Johnny is supposedly based on a real-life guy named Jesse James Hollywood, and he’s the title character, but we never really get inside his head. He’s a background player in his own story; the real heart of the movie is the relationship between the kidnapped Zack, and Johnny’s henchman Frankie (Justin Timberlake), who befriends the kid, but ultimately must arrange his demise.

Any time the movie strays from the dynamic between Zack and Frankie, or Frankie and fellow subordinate Elvis (Shawn Hatosy), it feels adrift…extended scenes with Bruce Willis and Harry Dean Stanton provide laughs, but feel obligatory to justify the star presence. Sharon Stone, as Mom Mazursky, also gets some extended screen time, but it feels less like a star obligation, and more like Cassavetes trying to recreate his real-life mom, Gena Rowlands, onscreen in a younger form. Stone steps up to the acting challenge, but it still comes off as a digression; she hasn’t been developed enough for her big emotional breakdown to be as meaningful as it should.

One odd stylistic quirk is the way Cassavetes uses a technique that isn’t exactly split-screen, but sometimes he’ll just black out a fraction of the screen for no apparent reason, occasionally to later fill it with an alternately angled image, but mostly just for no obvious point. It’s a distancing thing, but it isn’t clear that he intended it to add artifice to the proceedings and take us out of the story. Later, he uses a dolly-camera trick to great effect — he should focus on stuff like that and not on arbitrary masking.

The best thing about ALPHA DOG, though, is its casualness. With all the drinking, fucking, smoking, et al…it felt real. Never, at any point, did I wonder if an actress had contractually negotiated how much skin she was going to show, or at what angle. It isn’t necessarily a nekkid chick free-for-all, but when nudity would be realistic, it’s there. And it’s hot. I’m surprised there were no ratings issues, though I know there were some legal ones, which is why you’re finally seeing this movie over a year late and released by Universal, rather than New Line.