Alpha Dog (2006)
Directed by Nick Cassavetes
Johnny Truelove likes to see himself as tough. He's the son of an underworld figure and a drug dealer. Johnny also likes to get tough when things don't go his way. When Jake Mazursky fails to pay up for Johnny, things get worse for the Mazursky family, as Johnny and his 'gang' kidnap Jake's 15 year old brother and hold him hostage.
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Written and directed by Nick Cassavetes, and based on a sordid tale of abduction, murder and international flight involving the improbably named FBI most-wanted-listee Jesse James Hollywood, the film belongs in the same category as Bully, Mean Creek and River's Edge.
Thanks to permissive parents, easy access to drugs and money and moral guidance that apparently came from Al Pacino's "Scarface" and gangsta rap videos, they grew up to be low-lifes who spend their days getting high, basking in the California sun and generally carrying on as if they were on some sort of twisted reality show, perhaps "Less Than Zero: The Next Generation."
Scarface may be the gangsta rapper’s movie of choice (and you know these dudes knew that), but Alpha Dog has no layers of meditation, genre-centric or otherwise; rather, it feels like how these kids would portray themselves if they could, i.e. with a complete lack of irony (Foster's ridiculously histrionic performance notwithstanding) or insight, pandering to the mirror-kissing ethos of youthful posturing it should be reflecting.
Johnny has a "Scarface" poster on his wall, and he emulates that character in his business decisions.
Dominique Swain, Adrian Lyne's Lolita of yesteryear, is just as unbearably over-the-top, but with rather less intimation that she's "going for" a "take" on her non-character that isn't panning out.
And in Larry Clark's "Bully" (2001), a bunch of aimless high school graduates conspire to murder a manipulative "friend" because they can't think of anything better to do with their lives.
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(His last two pictures were the '40s romance "The Notebook" and "John Q," a hostage drama not-so-cleverly disguised as a treatise on healthcare problems in this country.)
Writer/director Nick Cassavetes' biography, in press materials for his new film "Alpha Dog," doesn't mention "The Notebook," his shamelessly gooey 2004 love story/weepie.
But they feel real and alive in the hands of writer-director Nick Cassavetes - who couldn't have gone in a more opposite direction from his 2004 weepy romance "The Notebook" - and whose story of drugs, kidnapping and murder is inspired by a 1999 Southern California case.
Big question: Can this violent saga be handled by Nick Cassavetes, director of the ultra-romantic "The Notebook"?
Cassavetes (writer of Blow, director of The Notebook) has created a film that many people will hate, because it sucks you in and then spits you out without remorse.