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Alpha Dog

Review By: Benjamin Lee
BenjaminLee@TheCinemaSource.com

It’s depressing.

I’m no longer at the age where I can watch teen movies and empathize with the lead characters. I’m no longer able to put myself in their 17-year-old state of mind and say ‘hey that could be me.’ There was a time when I could watch Scream or She’s All That and happily relate, albeit my high school days included far less killers in masks and girls who were beautiful underneath their frumpy glasses.

But now, alas, I can only relate to the actors who are playing the teens, since by and large they’re abnormally older than the characters they portray. In the new drama Alpha Dog, which is ‘based on a true story’, the teens indulge in drug dealing, underage threesomes, regular underage sex, violence and other festivities that help to make my teenage life appear incredibly dull.

Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsch) is a 19-year-old drug dealer who’s reputation in his Los Angeles neighborhood is unsurpassed. His mob family help him to keep a hold over his rich peers. When Jake Mazursky (Ben Foster) is unable to pay Johnny yet again for money owed, a war is started. A game of one-upmanship develops and escalates at a furious pace.

One day Johnny spots Jake’s younger brother Zack (Anton Yelchin) and hatches a plan. They’ll kidnap the kid and use him as a hostage. It’s a plan that constantly changes as him and his unwitting kidnappers find themselves out of their depth.

It’s a story which gradually descends into disaster and ultimately tragedy and the gradual sense of things getting uncontrollably out of hand is well conveyed. What’s refreshing to see is that these kids aren’t really that tough, they’re just pretending to be tough by imitating the gangster films and the hip-hop videos they watch repeatedly. This is especially notable in Ben Foster’s hugely OTT performance. Like an even shoutier Al Pacino, he delivers some bizarre moments that could either be attributed to over-acting or a really incisive grasp on his character’s psyche.

In the lead role, Emile Hirsch is woefully miscast. In real life, his counterpart may well have also been short in stature but the small, young-looking Hirsch never convinces as a wannabe drug lord capable of violence. Justin Timberlake is surprisingly not at all bad as Hirsch’s partner in crime. It’s not a difficult character to play but he acquits himself admirably. When it comes to the adults in the movie, Bruce Willis and Sharon Stone both give nicely restrained turns. At least that is until the end when an intensely weird Sharon Stone scene aims for poignancy but comes off ...