2008 Woodie Awards
Alpha Dog: Timberlake bites into first lead role
Ryan O'Connell
Issue date: 1/24/07 Section: Entertainment
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The first was getting kidnapped in sunny Southern California. And the second is that I really want to get some cool tattoos. Because I'm deathly afraid of needles though, the idea of getting kidnapped seems to be more appealing.
Especially if getting kidnapped entails what it does in Alpha Dog.
Alpha Dog is the story of bunch of dudes in Southern California who spend their days smoking cigarettes, getting baked, and drinking Heinekens. Occasionally things get a little spiced up if some crazy Skinhead owes them money, which they respond to by kidnapping his 15 year-old brother and holding him as a "marker". It is quite possibly one of the strangest and unsettling kidnapping movies ever made, landing somewhere between Dazed and Confused, Reservoir Dogs, and Kids. Writer and Director Nick Cassavetes can't be faulted for harboring some good intentions with the making of this movie, which is based on the true story of Jesse James Hollywood and the kidnapping of Nick Markowitz in 1999. But any message he's trying to get across, whether it's the dangers of bad parenting, the ills of following the leader, or why creative facial hair can lead to trouble, seem to get lost and muddled in a movie with scenes that seriously conflict with any intended message Cassavetes is trying to send.
The end result is a movie that: gives the audience a seriously distorted and ultimately tragic view of what it's like to be kidnapped, makes everyone realize that Justin Timberlake's talent far exceeds dancing in a banana costume and singing songs produced by Timbaland, and poses this simple question: Why is Sharon Stone still allowed to make movies where every time she cries when, it seems like she's ripping off her performance from Casino?
Regardless, Alpha Dog, is an incredibly watchable movie. This is mostly due to the performances of Timberlake and Ben Foster, as Jake Mazursky, a raging speed-freak skinhead.
It's Mazursky's altercation with local drug dealer and purveyor of fine baseball hats, Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsch) over-owed money, and then a trashed house and poorly placed feces that instigates the story. Truelove and his stoned goons, Frankie (Timberlake) and Tiko (Fernando Vargas) stumble upon Mazursky's younger brother, Zack (Anton Yelchin,) and decide to kidnap him as a way to get back at Jake. Unfortunately for Truelove, what his friends know about weed growing, partying, and wearing cool hats doesn't translate all that well to kidnapping. But honestly, the movie is exactly what I would imagine getting kidnapped by these dudes would be like.
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