CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Robert J. Maxwell Described as a docudrama, it's really a feature film that follows the time line of events pretty closely but perforce must introduce fictionalized dialog. That's okay. Nobody was taking notes and the dialog is convincing enough. The armature of the story is that some guy owes some other guy thirty large but he won't pay up, so the creditors kidnap the debtor's younger brother, take good care of him for a few days, and then, despite his swearing not to tell anyone about his so-called kidnapping, they shoot him full of holes in the desert in the mistaken belief that the fifteen-year-old hostage would squeal anyway and all the gang would get life imprisonment. It reminded me of "Kids" except that this was far more violent.It serves as an introduction to the anomic life of teen agers in the prettiest parts of Southern California -- Pomona, Montclair, Palm Springs. Their families are middle class but the kids themselves transcend social class. They form a logical set of their own. None seems to have a job. One muses about "taking a course" but it's clear that they have little interest in anything except the goings on of their own clique. They might find a graphic novel too challenging. Some of them wouldn't be able to find their home town on a map. They lack curiosity.What interests them the most is dope and money. Sex is readily available, with the beautiful girls (all with the same hair style) as eager as the boys, sometimes more eager. One girl applies all sorts of ministrations to her boy friend but he can't get it up. (And the girl is the unimpeachably beautiful Olivia Wilde.) The truly amazing thing is that ANY of the boys can get it up. They suck on bongs, smoke weed constantly, and drink hard liquor straight out of the bottle. No wonder some of them have a problem.It struck me that the parties ranged from ecstatic displays to bloody rage, with very little in between, a kind of binary party. But it's a little hard to reconcile this with the effects of marijuana or opiates with violence. Nevertheless, the violence is there and Ben Foster as one of the over-tattooed skin heads gets the palm for particularly intense role enactment. The guy is a human wrecking ball, trashing houses, decking three or four adversaries, and wearing white after Labor Day. Only one of these aimless guys shows any common sense but he's swept up in the plot anyway. They're all on the same hedonic treadmill.I wish that at least one of them would open a book or be seen watching something other than bad Westerns and cartoons. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, and so is a whole generation.

Floated2 Alpha Dog tells an impulsive, thoughtless act. Based on the true story of the Jesse James Hollywood story, Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsch) and his cronies don't know what to do with their new charge: one moment they stuff him in the closet and duct tape his mouth, and the next, he and Truelove's de facto second-in-command Frankie (Justin Timberlake) are playing X-Box. Zack is unfazed — on one level, he's enjoying the adventure (in what must ultimately be Alpha Dog's saddest moment, he asserts that he sees it as "just another story to tell his grandkids") Anton Yelchin virtually runs away with the film. Director Nick Cassavetes throws Zack into an exaggerated, flamboyant universe, his brother Jake is unaware that he's taken hostage by a bunch of wannabe Tony Montanas. Yelchin is remarkable in the way he grounds Alpha Dog in reality. Certain scenes stand entirely alone. Zack's encounter with his parents on the stairs, the subtlety of their interaction, his fully believable and familiar frustration. There's nothing else like it in the movie. Late in the film, Yelchin is given a hugely difficult scene where Zack's fantasy abruptly becomes a nightmare, and he nails it, converting Zack's ordinariness from something faintly amusing to something powerful and terrifying. Justin Timberlake is also very impressive in this scene. This also works because of the extent to which Zack is the story's moral compass. For as long as he likes and trusts his new friends, the kidnapping really does seem like fun and games, and the tone of the film shifts along with his perceptions. From this perspective, his relationship with Frankie, while touching in its way, is the ultimate betrayal, and his desperate appeals to his "friend" in the scene I mentioned earlier are one part of Alpha Dog I can't seem to get out of my mind.The other half of the film, as you may have guessed, focuses on the misadventures of the kidnappers, and here Cassavetes runs into some problems. To his great credit, his screenplay takes some real stabs at complexity: though seeming every bit the amateur gangstas, Johnny Truelove and Co. openly mock a gangsta rap music video; despite the casual misogyny constantly bandied about, Truelove himself is portrayed early on, and somewhat bizarrely, as a staunch monogamist. Then there's the issue of the parents, who are either corrupt, debauched or clueless; Cassavetes seems to blame them for allowing this to happen, and that seems about right.In the end, though, it's not quite convincing. Truelove is simply vile, a coward and a liar. He's not allowed to function as a villain, and Emile Hirsch doesn't have much to work with. The film resists the inevitable conclusion that these guys are just losers, insisting on a view of their activities that's much more exotic than they merit, and at a certain point threatening to seem silly. Including a lot of coarse language and some frightening scenes of violence, Alpha Dog can give you a sense of disturbance once completed watching the film.

slh1287 So, I thought this was a good movie- not great. I guess I was expecting a bit more than what I got from it. But don't get me wrong, the film DID deliver, there was just nothing extra with it or especially special about it. (Lol, that may be a tongue twister, my apologies if so!!) Anyway, even with that being said, Alpha Dog is definitely worth a view, at least, as it shows the importance of independence and being able to think for ourselves. The actors all do a wonderful job, and I'll focus that comment a little more toward Emile Hirsch and Ben Foster. Exceptional! And both Sharon Stone and Bruce Willis veer away from their usual characters in this one- and Sharon Stone's appearance at the end- WOW!!! So if you haven't seen this movie yet, go ahead and watch it. It won't be a waste of time or $, and who knows? You may even enjoy it more than I did.

ViernesTresAM The only reason I started watching this film is because I think Emile Hirsh and Anton Yelchin are good actors. At first, it seemed good talent wasted, and I couldn't stop wondering what was Bruce Wilis doing. However, my advice is to carry on watching the movie because if you can get passed the horrible acting of Justin Timberlake, suspense starts building up, characters develop in an unexpectedly deep way, and the climax scene makes this movie. It really saves it. The acting of Yelchin in that scene is the main reason why I'm reviewing this film, so that anyone who starts watching sticks up to the end because it's really worth it. Believe me, it really does get better, even GOOD, I dare say. That's why I give it a 7/10.