Based on the notorious true-life case of sometime fugitive Jesse James Hollywood - a Californian teenager wanted for the abduction and murder of a 15-year-old boy - Alpha Dog follows a gang of wannabe gangster teens over three days as their lives spin out of control towards senseless tragedy.
The film's Jesse James Hollywood (played by Lord�s of Dogtown�s Emile Hirsch) is the Alpha Dog of the title; a cocky, would-be gangster who manages the distribution of marijuana supplied by his father, Sonny (Bruce Willis).
His ready access to money and drugs underpins his leadership status over a band of cohorts, including good-time boy, Frankie (Justin Timberlake), and fall-guy Elvis (Shawn Hatosy).
Life in their privileged LA suburb is an endless round of partying and looking for the next thrill, as Truelove and his flunkies self-consciously seek to emulate the thug existence of their counter-culture heroes.
The gangster fantasy starts to spill dangerously over into real life when Truelove and one of his clients, Jack Mazursky (Ben Foster), clash over an unpaid drugs tab and the escalating feud leads to the formers� impulsive decision to kidnap Jake�s younger brother, Zack (Anton Yelchin). But this isn�t your usual hostage situation; with rebellious aspirations of his own, Zack happily becomes one of the gang and enjoys a few adventurous days of partying, drug-taking and girls, unaware that his life hangs increasingly in the balance.
Despite obvious pretensions towards gritty true-crime drama, Alpha Dog plays out for the most part like a sordid teen-exploitation movie. Director Nick Cassavetes (John Q, The Notebook) is keen to remind us that this is a true tale, however, the freeze-framed witness count and documentary-style interviews with some of the key players only serve to distance us further from the drama. The sight of a fat-suited Sharon Stone (as Zack�s mother), complete with comical prosthetic jowls, pouring out her grief to camera provides one of the films many cringe-inducing moments.
Any serious agenda Cassavetes may have had about the role of bad-parenting in the teenagers� skewed morals is lost amongst the grating clamour of exaggerated bravado from a set of under-constructed characters. Only Timberlake�s Frankie comes close to being a fully-formed individual (as opposed to just one of the gang) as he struggles to deal with his role in Zack�s fate.
Elsewhere, too many faces and voices compete for our attention, and with pivotal characters such as Elvis and Truelove himself dropping out of the action for long periods, the young ensemble cast has little opportunity to develop their characters beyond the gangster posturing.
Despite Cassavetes� reported access to Hollywood�s FBI case file, Alpha Dog is the stuff of lurid tabloid headlines rather than hardboiled true-crime. The sequence leading up to the film�s tragic denouement makes for genuinely disturbing viewing but this hollow portrayal of contemporary youth culture lacks the substance that would have given the harrowing subject matter an engaging context.
Entertainment News