By Koti Outlaw

When ALPHA DOG hit theaters this time last year, I was one of the many who brushed it aside as being another, tired, Justin Timberfake vehicle. When the DVD was released in the spring, I again brushed the film aside as the kind of MTV fare, best left to HBO Saturday night viewing.

Then people began to talk—people whose opinions I actually listen to. They said I should give ALPHA DOG a chance, that there was far more depth to it than the trailers (mis) advertised. So, after a lengthy wait in my Netflix que, ALPHA DOG recently got its turn in my DVD player. After watching the film, I can say that, while it probably wasn’t worth seeing in the theater, the movie has more going for it, than against it.

ALPHA DOG is based on the true story of Jesse James Hollywood, a California drug dealer who ordered the slaying of a young boy, and wound up being one of the youngest men ever to appear on the FBI’s most wanted list. In this film version, Hollywood’s name has been changed to Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsch). Johnny is a successful weed dealer, who is supplied by his drug-dealer father (Willis). Like many successful young men, Johnny’s ego is always a step ahead of his sensibilities. He throws wild parties in his lavish Beverly Hills “crib,” keeps flunkies and groupie girls on hand, and flashes his ill-gotten wealth and arsenal of guns like he is some suburban Scarface.

So enamored is Johnny with his own gangsta image—he and his friends berate rap videos for not being as “real” as them—that he thinks he can threaten and muscle whichever meek, teeny-bopper suburbanite owes him a dollar. But Johnny’s bark doesn’t scare Jake Mazursky (Bed Foster), a strung-out, deeply troubled, rich-kid who owes Truelove $1,200. When Johnny tries to push Jake around, Jake shows Johnny what the difference between bark and bite is really about. This sets off a decisive rivalry, one which starts with the usual adolescent antics (breaking into each other’s homes, defecating on carpets, etc…) but quickly escalates into something far more serious, and deadly.


Jake has a half-brother, Zack, who idolizes his older sibling. When Zack’s parents discover he is smoking pot, the geeky boy sneaks away from home, lest he face the wrath of a serious grounding. As Zack wanders around town, he runs afoul of Truelove and his gang, who take the opportunity to get back at Jake by kidnapping his brother. At first they go the gangster route: duct-taping their hostage and flashing guns at him, but this quickly becomes tiresome to the lazy teens. So, on to plan B: party with the kid. While Zack’s parents are at home crying their eyes out, and putting out amber alerts, Zack is having the time of his life, partying it up with the baddest boys in The Valley, drinking, smoking, and having threesomes with hot girls in swimming pools.

However, while Zack is living out his wildest dreams, things are careening toward disaster. Johnny sobers up long enough to realize that he and his posse are facing serious jail time for snatching the kid; worse than that, Jake is rampaging through the streets, (literally) tearing through every bar and club looking for his lost brother. Johnny knows the kid can never go home, if he wants to remain a free man. So he does the unthinkable: orders the most obsequious of his flunkies to murder Zack. The hit is done, sloppily, (these are spoiled teenagers playing gangster after all,) and one by one Johnny and his crew land in prison facing life, or death, sentences.

What surprised me about ALPHA DOG was just how well writer/director Nick Cassavetes let the story breathe. The movie takes its time, showing you in detail how these kids’ privileged lives ultimately took a tragic wrong turn. The form is that a police procedural: each scene is framed with text that lets you know which day of “the incident” you are watching, (Zack was held “hostage” about three days,) and which crime scene you are looking at. Every new character we meet, and even the peripheral extras, are all introduced in freeze-frame, with text listing their name, and their witness number from the trial.

I enjoyed the movie’s procedural format because it really gave me time to meditate on the senselessness of the crime, even as I was watching it unfold. Just seeing the amount of times where parents could’ve intervened, had they been more responsible about their kids, made my stomach turn. The sheer amount of witnesses that knew about the kidnapping as it was happening, (it tops off at thirty-eight,) makes me realize—as Johnny and his friends were headed towards the point of no return—that these were not cunning criminals, but foolish, bone-headed kids, whose only sense of the world was cobbled together from hormones, music-videos, and too much money to throw around. It’s that kind of understanding, and pity, that makes the tragic moment of Zack’s murder resonate so strongly. When the heinous deed is done, you’ve witnessed more than a murder—you’ve watched a handful of young kids throw away their lives forever, and the message definitely hits home.

ALPHA DOG boasts one of the most across-the-board talented casts I’ve seen recetly. Emile Hirsch is, to me, a young Sean Penn. The kid can go from “The Girl Next Door,” to ALPHA DOG, to “Into The Wild,” without missing a beat. Timberlake manages to hold his own, playing the naïve, pothead party-boy who first takes Zack under his wing, only to ultimately deliver him to his death. The pop singer showed some real acting chops in the murder scene. Ben Foster has the ‘unhinged weirdo’ market locked. The barfight sequence where he beats the s@#t out of a dozen men AND women, is better than a kung-fu flick. Sharon Stone turns in a strong performance as Zack’s mother, a suburban mom with everything she could want, who tragedy transforms into an over-weight, heart-broken shell, who babbles on like she’s already slipped over the edge. Stone pulls off the transition well. Willis, as Johnny’s morally ambiguous father, and Henry Dean Stanton as his oldest cohort, bring weight to their brief roles. The cast of lovely young ladies (Dominique Swain, Olivia Wilde and Amanda Seyfried) do well enough with their roles, which are basically the catalysts for these hormone-crazed young men to act like the tough-guys the really aren’t.


The ALPHA DOG DVD has two bonus features. One is the standard “making the movie” video diary, spliced with interviews from the stars and director Nick Cassavettes. It’s pretty so-so. The other feature is a bit cooler: it’s an interactive witness timeline that lists all thirty-eight witness in chronological order, includes their actual testimony taken from the trial. You can click on any one of the witnesses, and you get a chance to re-watch the scene from the film in which that witness appears. It’s pretty nifty.

All in all, ALPHA DOG has some bite to it. Rent it, watch it, give Timberlake a chance. You might not be as disappointed as you thought you would.