Alpha Dog
DIR/WRI: Nick Cassavetes • PROD: Sidney Kimmel, Chuck Pacheco • DOP: Robert Fraisse • ED: Alan Heim • DES: Dominic Watkins • CAST: Ben Foster, Shawn Hatosy, Emile Hirsch, Sharon Stone, Justin Timberlake, Anton Yelchin, Bruce Willis

‘How did it ever go so far?’ reads the tagline for Nick Cassavetes’ latest feature, Alpha Dog. But perhaps it could have said something more along the lines of ‘Crime doesn’t pay’ – true, but perhaps a bit unoriginal - or ‘Don’t become a drug peddler if you are vertically disinclined’ – Emile Hirsch’s character would attest to this – or perhaps even ‘Isn’t Bruce Willis looking very old these days?’ The fact is that, whatever the point of Alpha Dog is supposed to be – be it that violence is often needless and pointless or that if you dabble in drugs you will end up sorry – will be sadly lost on Cassavetes’s audience. In an attempt to make a hard-hitting tale of true events as close to the reality as possible, infusing the film with documentary-style interviews and captions, Cassavetes has managed to make a film that, albeit factually accurate, is void of emotion. How did it ever go so far? Sometimes people are idiots, Nick. Plain and simple.

From the outset Alpha Dog has a lot going for it. An impressive cast including Emile Hirsch, Sharon Stone and Bruce Willis add weight to what, on paper at least, is a hard-hitting story of a kidnapping gone too far. Alpha Dog is based on the true story of Jesse James Hollywood, one of the youngest ever people on the FBI’s most wanted list. His gang kidnaps 15-year-old Zack Mazursky (Anton Yelchin) and one would expect an emotional punch come his eventual murder. However, what starts off as an examination of Emile Hirsch’s character (called ‘Jonny Truelove’ in the film) quickly turns into a showcase for Justin Timberlake’s acting chops. His character Frankie Ballenbacher keeps Zack Mazursky occupied through parties, getting high and general teenage tomfoolery. And this is entertaining to a point – yes, it appears that Justin Timberlake can act. But if Nick Cassavetes is really asking the question ‘How did it ever go so far?’, would a little examination of Jonny Truelove not go amiss? Unfortunately, bar showing the audience that he’s physically small and aware of this, and that he and his ‘crew’ are somewhat haphazard, the little exposition of his character means that we neither condemn him fully (it appears he did indeed try to call off the shooting) and don’t quite withhold condoning his actions (he didn’t, after all, hurt the boy once throughout the film).

Much like Richard Linklater’s Fast Food Nation, Cassavetes suffers from a problem of format – stuck between film and documentary, the director hopes that one aspect will benefit the other but ultimately we’re left with a tale that should pack an emotional punch, but is actually rather cold and without depth. In the opening scene, Bruce Willis’s character Sonny Truelove tells the interviewer of the film, ‘You want to know what this is all about? This whole thing is about parenting.’ Well Alpha Dog told me nothing about parenting and furthermore, didn’t tell me much at all about anything. Oh. It did tell me that a musician could act. But that wasn’t the point, was it?

Jason Robinson

Rated 18 (see IFCO website for details)
Alpha Dog is released on 20th April 2007.
Alpha Dog – Official website