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What’s the Story?

Reviewed by Cynthia Fuchs

Based on the story of real-life murder suspect Jesse James Hollywood, ALPHA DOG focuses on a drug dealer and bully named Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsch), detailing the day-by-day chronology of his gang's 2000 kidnapping and eventual murder of 15-year-old Zack (Anton Yelchin). Justin Timberlake co-stars as one of Johnny's crew members.

Is It Any Good?

3

Director Nick Cassavetes' film is part formal experimentation, part big-screen America's Most Wanted, part showcase for talented young performers, and part lament for "today's youth." It begins with Eva Cassidy's sorrowful cover version of "Over the Rainbow," as home movie-style images show children laughing and playing with their families and celebrating holidays. When one youngster points a toy gun at the camera, you get a sense of the film's dire trajectory.

As energetic and sensational as it is, Alpha Dog gives short shrift to key themes having to do with class differences and gendered behaviors. As much as these boys want to show off their vaunted hyper-masculinity (they lift weights, fight repeatedly, pull out guns, and talk about sex a lot), they're unable to have conversations (they are, however, very adept at flinging obscenities in efforts to avoid self-examination). And the movie doesn't dig much deeper than the boys in its representation of the persistent problem of violent, careless kids who feel lost, their childhoods "stolen."

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