Review of Alpha Dog (2006) by James S — 13 Sep 2009

If you can get past the sheer volume of the use of the f word in this movie then what you have is a pretty decent story of youth mis-spent and the effects of peer pressure.

Emile Hirsch gives a decent performance as the rather stupidly named Jonny Truelove, a Californian drug dealer who becomes embroiled in a gang war with Ben Foster, in an another excellent turn, and in a bout of desperation crossed with blind stupidity kidnaps Foster's younger brother, Zack who finds the whole thing quite cool.

Justin Timberlake adds some meat to the cast as Truelove's right hand man and there is a great performance from Shaun Hatosy as the guy desperate to be included in Jonny's gang.

There are many scenes of young people smoking, drinking, lounging around and swearing a lot. It's much like a less intense version of Larry Clark's Bully. The story does keep rolling along but the film seems more pre-occupied with the scenes of debauchery rather than exploring exactly why Zack doesn't just run a mile when given the opportunity. the adults in the movie, Bruce Willis and Sharon Stone are mostly invisible apart from an excellent moment from Stone late in the proceedings.

The film does come to a shocking and moving climax and it's at this point that you realise that perhaps you had begun to care about what happens to these characters after all. This is no Hollywood ending, though the film does try and salvage some good feeling with those this is what happened style post credits captions.

Alphadog is a good enough film if somewhat sensationalist and may be a little too good looking.