Last night I sat at home with a bag of popcorn and watched "Alpha Dog", mostly out of morbid curiousity...morbid indeed. outside of the fact that it completely pissed me off by the end and further justified my views on capital punishment which I will discuss later, it was an all around badly made film. The back of the cover said "controversial"... the only controversy I could find after finishing it was whether I should take it back to the video store, or save them the trouble and destroy it myself. It's not that the plot was even that terrible...in fact, the plot was pretty much the only good part of it, mostly because it was based on a true story, and, lets face it, real life is so much more messed up than even the most vivid imagination. The story was based in the Inland Empire, Ca...yes, the 909 (home, sweet home) and was based around 2 white drug dealers and their "posse"'s. For some reason or another, one owed the other money, so the one owed, Johnny, kidnapped the other one's 15 year old brother Zack on a whim, with every intention of returning him for the money, until one of his guys told him that he would get 25 to life if he was caught. Frankie, (Justin Timberlake) who was in charge of making sure Zack didn't escape, basically made it so that he didn't want to go home, and by the time the orders came through to kill him, Zack was looking to stay and become a part of the gang, until, of course, they shot him in the face with a semi automatic. engaging plot, right?
Every other element was a trainwreck. The entire script consisted of three primary words; "fuck", "bitch", and "fuck" again. Cutting out these words would have dropped the roughly 120 page script down to about 50 pages, so naturally, they had to fill it with something, why not a few thousand unnecessary obscenities just for good measure?
And really, who decided it would be a good idea to cast JT as a thug? It was like watching a dog try to dance on it's hind legs...sad really....and what's even more sad, is that he actually ended up to be one of my favorite characters, mostly because I was just waiting for his skinny, stick-on tattooed ass to bust out with "I just wanna love you baby, yaa yaaaa".
I honestly have no Idea what Bruce Willis and Sharon Stone were thinking with this one....do they really need the work that badly? There was one point where they stuck Sharon Stone in a fat suit, and she bore an uncanny resemblace to Wynonna Judd. I think the film's only saving grace acting-wise was the kid who played Zack. He was actually pretty good. The rest of the cast, outside of the kid, JT, and the two out of work A-listers, were brought in from movies like "Lords of Dogtown", and the stupid girl from "Mean Girls"...can we say "typecasting"?
I hate that it had subtitles for every other scene. e.g. " Circus Liquor, Claremont, California, 11:48p.m." and, "Mrs. Sublette and her black Toyota Sequoia, Pomona, California, 12:27a.m.". Absolutely frustrating, first, because they were there, and second, they didn't stay up long enough to read once you got over the annoyance that you would be lost if you didn't read them.
They did find an interesting way to edit the under lit, hard to watch, and poorly acted scenes, however, the off-center split scene editing momentarily took my mind off how bad the rest of the movie was.
On a personal note...
But, being the eternal cinematic optimist that I am, i did manage to find that although technically, and really, artistically as well, "Alpha Dog" was like watching the Titanic sink for the 99th time, it did piss me off...a lot...I mean other than they allowed this film to be released mainstream. The fact that these ass holes are still sitting on death row for murdering an innocent 15 year old kid seriously desturbs me. We as taxpayers are paying 100,000 dollars a year for each of these little shits so that they can sit on death row in San Quintin for the next 25 years. It costs $8 to administer a leathal injection. we could save the state of California $299, 976 this year, and $300,000 every year after that if we strapped these murdering little bastards down and injected them. better yet, I heard an idea on XM comedy that really didn't sound so bad, and yes, you'll probably call me bad names after this one, but que sera. Since there are so many American soldiers dying in Iraq due to mine fields, and freak accidents, I say, if people are given a death sentance, instead of setting them in prison for 30 years to live, and take up our tax money, give them a one-way ticket to Iraq, put them in thier little orange jump suits, and set them running out in front of our brave soldiers (who don't deserve to have thier leg blown off by a landmine or be mangled by a handgranade) and have them clear the mine fields Alquida can use them as target practice instead. Not bad, eh? I bet the murder rate in America would drop by 50%. It's rediculous that they use the "scare" and punishment" tactic for DUI's but heaven forbid we deter rapists and murderers with the death penalty. just a thought.
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