Alpha Dog
The Trouser Snake can act. Rather well as it happens
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Thursday, 19, Apr 2007 05:27
Directed by Nick Cassavetes, out April 20th at cinemas, starring Justin Timberlake, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster, Bruce Willis, Sharon Stone and Anton Yelchin, running time 114 mins.
In a nutshell.
Brutal tale of bad choices and bad consequences
What's it all about?
Johnny Truelove (Hirsch) thinks he's it. He's got the girl, the rep, the money and the lifestyle and lives in sunny southern California to boot. His dad is the notorious Sonny Truelove (Willis), who taught is son all he needed to know about the life of drug-dealing, rich-kid style.
Surrounded by his band of brothers who treat him like he's the big man he thinks he is, Truelove lives the high-life, partying, smoking dope and scrapping with equally low-status rivals. But when he has to keep his tough image intact in the face of drug addict Jake Mazursky's (Ben Foster) unpaid debt, things go tragically wrong.
Based on the true story of the kidnapping and murder of 15-year-old Nicholas Markowitz, Alpha Dog chronicles the hard-hitting account of how choosing a certain path can lead to things spiralling out of all control with fatal consequences.
Who's in it?
Newcomer Hirsch plays Johnny Truelove, based on the youngest person ever to be on the FBI's most wanted list, Jesse James Hollywood. According to Hirsch, his character has a "really wild arc. is extremely cocky and is in full control of his world". But by the end his true characteristics shine through. "The transition makes him lose his spine and turns him into a little boy, so there's a lot of humility in the role."
Justin Timberlake may be better known as Britney's ex and the ladies' favourite popstar, but here he shines as the tattooed Frankie Ballenbacher. Likeable but ultimately as capable of evil as the rest of his self-styled gang, Frankie represents what might have been in the film and its true-life counterpart. Had Zack Mazursky, played by Yelchin, accepted his offer to run free rather than naively opting to stay a 'hostage' in the belief that it would help out his brother Jake, then things would have turned out so very differently.
Bruce Willis, as the elder Truelove, and Sharon Stone, as Zack's distraught mother, add their Hollywood status to the youthful cast but in truth it is the brash bunch of SoCal kids about which this movie is about.
As an example.
Johnny Truelove: "You ever have that dream: the one where you did something... You don't know why, but you can never go back?"
Sonny Truelove: "You wanna know what this is all about? You can say this about drugs or guns or bad decisions, whatever you like. But this whole thing is about parenting. And taking care of your children."
Likelihood of a trip to the Oscars
Cassavetes' movie closed last year's Sundance Festival and has been keenly awaited Stateside because of it's real-life resemblance. Released at the turn of the year in the US, Alpha Dog has split critics primarily because of its controversial choice of plot and the fact that Hollywood was caught in South America during filming, resulting in a swift re-write.
Timberlake has been widely hailed for his performance but that is more down to the surprise that he can act at all than an Oscar-winning display from the Trouser Snake.
What the others say
"Treading disastrously on the teenage wasteland already fetishized in a million Larry Clark movies, Alpha Dog scratches its balls and sniffs its own butt, cynically playing its noxious characters and story line as rough indie cred..Alpha Dog will leave you reaching for the beta-blocker." - Time Out New York
"Is Timberlake's inclusion justified? Absolutely. He's a natural, adding emotional weight to his role with every scene, culminating in a moment of genuine tragedy under the stars... Almost cried me a river." Sky Movies
So is it any good?
There's little doubt that Cassavetes aims to shock with Alpha Dog. Picking such a sensitive topic, changing the names and then assembling a cast that includes a former boyband singer for such brutal subject matter is always likely to cause a stir. Add to that the graphic, and often gratuitous, violence; the curse-ridden dialogue; and the vivid portrayal of stoned and sex-mad schoolchildren and it is little surprise that some have been offended by the end product.
Set in a whirlwind 36-hour long weekend in the lush and opulent surrounds of sunny southern California, the progress from spur-of-the-moment decision-making to the film's inevitable conclusion is dramatic and powerful. Cassavetes wants to make us think and unexpectedly uses Timberlake to put us in the position he and his petty juvenile delinquents-turned-murderers find themselves in.
"These are not really good kids that just lose their way for one weekend," Cassavetes says of the film and the story behind it. "Children can be ugly. They haven't had their time to get their routines and their personalities in order. They have many rough edges, and I didn't want to lose that."
He doesn't lose that. We are filled with disgust and disbelief for all but a smattering of the characters and even they have vivid and venomous flaws. There's no happy ending and no moral reawakening but that is precisely the point. Give these kids the power to decide over life and death and there's a very real danger they will take the wrong path without realising they even had a choice.
8/10
Martin Ashplant