Alpha Dog: Takes "difficult viewing" to new heights

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ***

Kids gone bad and the parents who enable 'em have been movie staples probably since Reefer Madness and certainly since I was a kid gone bad (the Rebel Without a Cause era), so you can be forgiven for imagining that Alpha Dog will not add much to the canon. And at first, so it seems. The assortment on display of Southern California twinkies masquerading as raw sirloin--oh, the posturings, the potty mouths, the "acting" opportunities given this up-to-the-minute ensemble of young Hollywood!--is enough to induce you to grab that remote. I swear I reached for mine a number of times before realizing midway that I was beginning to care about what might happen.

The caring comes from the character of 15-year-old Zack Mazursky (a lovely, genuine and unsentimental performance by Anton Yelchin) who is pointlessly kidnapped by the film's would-be Alpha Dog and his "crew," due to unpaid debts owed by Zack's worthless-but-scary older brother. When the gang, not all that fired up about hostage-taking, gives their kidnapee pretty much free rein to have fun, the characters relax a bit and traces of humanity begin to appear. True, there ain't much, but it's there. What isn't there is the ability on the part of these kids to think, act or feel with enough autonomy to circumvent an approaching catastrophe. As the event grows nearer, I swear you will experience perhaps the most harrowing hour of movie-watching of your life. And I am not talking about blood and guts. The sense of enormous injustice combined with the powerlessness to affect it is well-nigh unbearable, so credit must be given to writer/director Nick Cassavetes (doing his best work thus far) and his cast for a rare accomplishment--and one which I hope not to have to experience ever again.

That the cast includes Bruce Willis, Harry Dean Stanton and Sharon Stone, all doing a fine job, is an added plus, while the youngsters--also including Shawn Hatosy, Justin Timberlake and Ben Foster-- are first-rate. The weak link--and it surprises me to say this, given my admiration for this fine young actor in literally everything else I've seen him do--is Emile Hirsch (The Emperor's Club, The Girl Next Door, Lords of Dogtown). Here, for whatever reason, Hirsch does not demonstrate a commanding enough presence--physically, vocally or emotionally--to make us believe he could lead this crew or force them do what they finally do. Foster would have made a more convincing Johnny Truelove; as the elder Mazursky brother, he scares the bejesus out of us, as it is. Alpha Dog is based on a true crime case, the final piece of which is still pending. If you don't know the story, once into it, you'll be quickly carried along. But if you do know it, trust me, this will not make the going any easier.