Alpha Dog

2006

Action / Biography / Crime / Drama / Thriller

63
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 67% · 142 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 67% · 250K ratings
IMDb Rating 6.9/10 10 111147 111.1K

california kidnapping hostage swimming pool marijuana drugs

Plot summary

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.

Director

Nick Cassavetes Photo
Nick Cassavetes

Top cast

Amanda Seyfried Photo
Amanda Seyfried as Julie Beckley
Amber Heard Photo
Amber Heard as Alma
Olivia Wilde Photo
Olivia Wilde as Angela Holden
Sharon Stone Photo
Sharon Stone as Olivia Mazursky
720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay
1.05 GB
1280*546
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 57 min
Seeds 12
2.16 GB
1920*818
English 5.1
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 57 min
Seeds 21

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by The_Amazing_Spy_Rises 8 / 10

Powerful and realistic. Well done by Cassavetes and Timberlake.

Alpha Dog starts off as what seems like a movie all about a group of friends who life their idea of the American dream: doing drugs, having sex, and hanging out with each other not a care in the world. However, when their leader, Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsch), decides to kidnap the brother (Anton Yelchin) of a man (Ben Foster) who owes him drug money, their perfect world begins to shatter as they realize that their mindless prank has become a situation that could get them stuck in jail for the rest of their lives.The acting is pretty good considering the cast is mostly young men with little to no experience. First, you have Anton Yelchin, whom the plot centers around. He is the young man trying to grow up, and finds a real sense of comfort in his captors, as weird as it sounds. He does a great job building a likable, yet flawed character. The film definitely displays likable characters, but the audience has to remember that these characters are not good people. Ben Foster has always been around in my eyes, and he delivers his most intense role yet as the scary and sadistic Jake Mazursky. Very good job. Emile Hirsch is steadily developing into a good leading man after nice turns in Lords of Dogtown and The Girl Next Door. He's the leader of the group, and he has a certain presence despite his small size that reminds the viewer who's in command. Sharon Stone continues to defy my expectations of her after watching her in Bobby and this film. Very intense and powerful performance, which is very heartfelt at the end of the film. However, none of these performances stack up close to that of GASP Justin Timberlake. Timberlake really stood out to me in the film as Frankie, Johnny's best friend. He develops a strong friendship with Yelchin's character, and Timberlake really steals the show the whole time. His character is the most believable and likable of the bunch. Bruce Willis and Shawn Hatosy are also good in limited screen time (I don't think I've seen Willis have this much hair in a long time).Nick Cassavetes does a good job as director, giving us the exact opposite of his most famous work to date, The Notebook. He delivers the gritty and realistic feel of 1999 Southern California and gets great performances out of actors who you don't really expect it from. The film definitely was better than I expected because of Justin Timberlake. I thought he would make the film worse but he made it better. It has some sex scenes and nudity, not to mention a lot of language, so Alpha Dog isn't really appropriate for anyone under 16 or 17. With a good ensemble cast, a good script, good direction, and a heart wrenching climax, Alpha Dog is a good movie to watch.8/10 --spy
Reviewed by Buddy-51 7 / 10

underrated morality tale taken from today's headlines

Although many of the actual names and locations have been changed for the movie, Nick Cassavetes' "Alpha Dog" tells the largely fact-based story of a particularly heinous homicide that took place in Southern California in the summer of 2000 (changed to the fall of 1999 for the film). The crime involved a group of young drug dealers who kidnapped, then eventually murdered, the 15-year-old brother of a fellow drug dealer who owed the ringleader money and who, largely out of stubbornness and pride, refused to pay up the debt. After the discovery of the body, most of the perpetrators were convicted and sent to prison, but the mastermind, Jesse James Hollywood (called Johnny Truelove in the movie), managed to flee to South America where, in 2005, he was eventually arrested and sent back to the States to face trial on the charge of murder-in-the-first-degree."Alpha Dog" provides a grim, depressing look at the dark underbelly of American society where amoral, disenfranchised and disaffected youth play life-and-death games with drugs and guns, often with tragic consequences. In the case of this story, what begins almost as a spontaneous lark suddenly turns into deadly serious business as events begin to spiral further and further out of control as the story races ever more rapidly to its pre-ordained and inexorably tragic conclusion. Cassavetes has written a tight script that captures the fast-paced, drug-soaked milieu in which these young people do their "business." Yet, even though a number of the boys display a callous disregard for life, there are others who see the wrongness of what they are doing but who, through fear or misplaced loyalty or simply a belief that things "would never really go that far," fail to put the brakes on the whole sordid affair before it is too late. It is in that context that Truelove relinquishes his role as the main focal point of the film in favor of Frankie Ballenbacher, a cheerfully sardonic wise guy whose job it is to watch over the boy while Johnny figures out what next to do with him. As Frankie becomes more and more attached to the kid, it becomes harder and harder for him to comply with Johnny's ultimate order of liquidating him. Frankie, thus, becomes the emotional buy-in point for the audience, even more so than the kidnapped boy himself.There are fine performances by Emile Hirsch, Shawn Hatosy, Ben Foster ("Six Feet Under"), Bruce Willis, Harry Dean Stanton and Sharon Stone, among others, but it is Justin Timberlake, as the high-strung but basically goodhearted Frankie, who walks off with the film. In his every moment on screen, the charismatic Timberlake brings an intensity, shrewdness and liveliness to his performance that bodes well for his future career in movies.In his direction, Cassavetes generates a starkness of vision and moodiness of tone that are greatly enhanced by the brooding, darkly-lit camera-work of French cinematographer Robert Fraisse.The movie has a few weaknesses. The faux-interview scenes, which Cassavetes periodically interjects into the film, don't do much to enhance the storyline and succeed only in confusing the audience and interrupting the action. Moreover, the ending comes upon us much too abruptly, depriving us of a sense of completion and catharsis, particularly in regards to Frankie's apprehension and feelings of remorse over what he did, as well as the older brother's reaction to the discovery of his sibling's body. And there are sporadic rare moments, mainly in the early part of the film, where one gets the sense that the cast members are "playacting" rather than truly inhabiting their parts. But these impressions are few and very fleeting and, for the most part, the actors do an admirable job of conveying the down-and-dirty reality of the life they are portraying."Alpha Dog" turns the spotlight on a subset of society we may not want to admit is there but which nonetheless exerts a tremendous negative influence on all our lives. The film serves as an alarm signal and a wakeup call that we ignore at our own peril.
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