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Based on the true story of Jesse James Hollywood—here called, with far less panache, Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsch)—Alpha Dog
is directed by Nick "Son of John" Cassavetes with a distracting flair
that senselessly uses all sorts of gimmicks, like split-screen, to
cover-up the film's thematic vacuity; the most egregious example is his
inclusion of to-the-camera interviews with the actors in character,
like he was Ingmar Bergman or some shit. It seems a poor attempt to
justify the film's voyeuristic exploitation aesthetic, as everything
else is far too exaggerated to pass for realistic, based on a true
story or not, regardless of how many touches of verite you try to pad
it with. Truelove, a high-wheeling, nineteen year old druglord, gets
into some serious beef with one of his dealers, Jake Mazursky (Ben
Foster, laughably awful), that escalates out of control; when Mazursky
takes a shit on his carpet and steals his phat TV, Truelove retaliates,
on a whim, by kidnapping Mazursky's exceedingly likeable little brother
Zack (Anton Yelchin). ("What's not to like?" a character later asks,
"he's fifteen!") Truelove and his gang end up giving Zack the time of
his life, getting him high, drunk and laid and giving him a little bit
of the peer-validation that he can't get living with his overbearing
mother (Sharon Stone, also awful), the kind of woman who happens to,
for what it's worth, watch him while he sleeps.
bravenet.com
