ADVANCED SCREENING REVIEW: Alpha Dog
“Gritty and tense; oh and Justin Timberlakes in it”
A movie with Justin Timberlake can’t be good.That was the impression in my head as well. Ok so thats surface content. Suffice it to say that while I was impressed with the trailer, which had aired about 1 year ago, I kind of lost track of where this movie was going and what had happened. And like most movies where that happens, it resurfaced in the form of a news story claiming that the movie, based on actual events, had now got caught in some sort of litigation with the actual subject of the movie, Jesse James Hollywood, known fictionally as Johnny Truelove. I get this advanced screening pass all of a sudden, that features a Q&A with Nick Cassavetes, the films director and writer, and bang…I’m there. And let me tell you cherubs, a movie with Justin Timberlake can be good.
Alpha Dog worked for me on many levels. It was humorous, thrilling and even gut wrenching. Cassavetes really got some great preformance out of a very talented cast. This along with The Departed shows that films cast with loads of talent under the right direction can really shine. The story movies along in a pretty structured narrative form, jumping from different character perspectives and doing so quite well. I was entertained at the relationships between the teenage characters and the darker side of what was apparently their easy life. The story of Jesse James Hollywood is an entirely tragic one; really for both parties involved. And the movie doesn’t feed you the answer to where your loyalties should lie.
The acting, specifically Ben Foster and the kid playing the younger brother, was pretty much on the mark. The one person I couldn’t get around to liking that much was Johnny Truelove, played by Emile Hirsch. He’s a talented young actor, but his preformance was pretty pedestrian here. Justin Timberlake, was surprisingly pretty decent. He has good comedic timing and even captures some emotions. But all in all, he does come off over the top throughout a good deal of the film. This movie reminded me of typical teenage movies but with a really good story (not the open mosaic of KIDS or Havoc). Cassavetes did a good job researching his material and making these characters unique yet life-like.
Now for the bad stuff. There are some parts that make this movie slow down and really miss some marks. Granted, this is a true story, but some of the added material maybe could have been left out. The dialogue really keeps the movie going, but certain scenes really leave the viewer feeling bored, right after they had been wowed. The final segment of scenes toward the end of the movie, then being bookended with an interview serve as my prime example. Totally sucked the moment I just watched right out of me. Some spotty and over the top preformances as well as a mis-cue on some of the representation, hindered this film for me. When I say mis-cue I mean, the viewer is sent the wrong message at times about characters and their intentions. Maybe that’s also in the way one takes the movie.
My favorite scenes were any with Ben Foster and the final scenes towards the end with Timberlake, Elvis and the kid. Really powerful and tense scenes that I take away from this movie. Again, the final scenes really held my attention and made me feel really tense, so be in for a badass ending. Those are my lasting impressions of the flick, with it’s few chinks in the armor. This movie get’s a solid 8 out of 10 Bones for being a really cool adaptation and pretty strong film-making.
RATING:
Let me also comment to this and say that the Q&A really was an awesome experience. Being in the presence of a director/writer so amiable and so in-tuned with his experience made my movie-going experience ten times better. I was able to seperate this sentiment from my review, but Nick Cassavetes is truely a cool guy as well as pretty damn good director. He discussed many aspects of the film with the audience and entertained all questions with an F-bomb and a smile. Really cool guy.