Alpha Dog (2007, DVD)

There is something wrong with American, the American dream. This generation of young people has seemingly lost it way, thrown off course by too much idle time, too much affluence, and a way too lax moral compass. What is the blame for this cesspool? What has happened to America? We are fast becoming a society ruled by random violence and lack of respect for the law, civility, or life. Enter Alpha Dog, a kaleidoscope on incivility, drug, ransom sex and violence set in the backdrop of sunny California.

In many ways Alpha Dog reminds me of Havoc (2005) starring Anne Hathaway; that movie too featured rich suburban White children trying to live the gangster life; i.e. they spend endless hours watching gangster rap music videos, drinking, doing drugs, cursing like sailors. In general their lives are going nowhere fast, but they don t seem to mind, or even care.

The movie directed by Nick Cassavates (Face/Off, The Astronaut's Wife) stars a regular A-list of Hollywood stars including Bruce Willis, Sharon Stone, Harry Dean Stanton and Justin Timberlake and is actually based on true events that took place in California in 1999; the names have been changed t protect the innocent.

Alpha Dog is at times hard to watch, not so much for the content, but because I really didn t want to believe that societal discourse has fallen to such a debasing extreme. None of these young people respected anything; themselves each other, their parents, and certainly not the institutions that make up American society. They lived, and indeed continue to live, in a world all their own divorced as it were from the mainstream of the society in whole.

Cinematically Alpha Dog is well written and acted; grudging kudos to Mr. Timberlake! And the movie does a good job of laying out the back-story that led up to the kidnapping and eventual murder of a 15-year old boy. Great acting makes Alpha Dog compelling yet depressing, and proves that American teenagers can not only be witless, but sadly ruthless as well.