Review: ALPHA DOG

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Alpha Dog–*1/2

Alpha Dog may be Nick Cassavetes worst film, but not because it isn’t a cinematic topic. Quite the opposite is true. The story of the 20-year-old California drug dealer Jesse James Hollywood had movie written all over it. His name is Hollywood, after all. Instead of letting that story be the guide, Cassavetes tries to get more creative than his limited talent can handle and cracks the solid foundation that was already laid.

Jesse James Hollywood is renamed Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsh) in Cassavetes’ retelling. When Truelove and his associate Jake Mazursky (Ben Foster) get into a fight over a debt, a war begins. Truelove gets Mazursky fired from his telemarketing job. Mazursky trashes Truelove’s house. When Truelove can’t find Mazursky, he and his crew stage an impromptu kidnapping of Mazursky’s half-brother Nick (Anton Yelchin).

The kidnapping seemed like a good idea. Nick doesn’t even mind partying and taking a break from his overprotective mother (Sharon Stone). But when Truelove finds out he’s not going to get off easy if they get caught, he dispatches Elvis (Shawn Hatosy) and Frankie (Justin Timberlake) to make the problem go away…forever.

I have to admit, watching Alpha Dog made me feel bad for Nick Cassavetes. He lives in the shadow of his father John Cassavetes, and that must be tough. It’s even tougher when you’re the son of a maverick and can only be described as boring.

Still, when I say boring, I mean it in a nice way. Cassavetes showed with The Notebook that he can control a classical, character-driven production more competently that most. That is exactly why I thought he would be great for Jesse James Hollywood’s story.

In Alpha Dog, however, he goes on creative tangents to make a standard film into a messy faux-documentary. I’m not quite sure what he was trying to accomplish. Maybe criticizing the media that sensationalized the story? I don’t know. What I do know is that it happened so sporadically the technique’s effect was negated, whatever that effect might have been.

In one of those documentary-style interviews, Sharon Stone appears in a comically unflattering fat suit. Considering there was a sense of heft just below the film’s surface, it was startling to find myself laughing at something so superficial. But I did. That’s the problem with Alpha Dog.

The casting of Emile Hirsch is also an issue. It seems too easy picking Hirsch to play Truelove as the boy next door, not just a hard-bitten drug dealer. In truth, a surprisingly good Justin Timberlake fits that role better than the one he was playing. If anyone comes out of Alpha Doglooking better than they did going in, it’s Timberlake who proves he’s got the chops to pull of at least something unsubstantial.

Yes, Alpha Dog is an unsubstantial film. With the film’s potential to say something or to just provide a solid character study, declaring it so is almost painful. Cassavetes and crew have made a version of a story that doesn’t even exceed the Jesse James Hollywood episode of Dateline. When you can’t beat fluff like that, was it worth making in the first place? I’m saying no.