Alpha Dog (6 out of 10)

Alpha Dog, directed by Nick Cassavetes, and starring Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster, Bruce Willis, Sharon Stone, and Justin Timberlake among others, tells the true story of the kidnapping and murder of Zack Mazursky by the order of drug dealer Johnny Truelove (Jesse James Hollywood in real life).

Basically, Ben Fosters' character, Jake Mazursky, owes Truelove some money, and it escalates to the kidnapping of Mazursky's half-brother, played by Anton Yelchin. The impromptu and odd kidnapping is not your average kidnapping, wherein Zack is actually treated like one of the guys, meets some girls, gets high and drunk, and becomes close friends with one of the kidnappers played by Justin Timberlake. However, things spin out of control, and eventually Zack is murdered.

I don't know what it is, but at it's most basic, the story sounds like something out of Greek or Shakespearean tragedy. Of course, get rid of all the modern day bits, but the whole idea has some classical about it, and that makes this whole movie a bit more watchable. It's hard to believe this is a true story, though some of it could be exaggerated or made up for film.

This movie was at times great, and at others ridiculously poor. At it's best, it was fun, with just the right amount of suspense and doom in each scene, but at other times, you really wonder what these people were thinking.

The performances were a mixed bag. Emile Hirsch was real good, Ben Foster was unbelievable, and even Justin Timberlake did pretty well for most of the movie until the end when he is supposed to do a crying scene and it fails horribly. Anton Yelchin still has not impressed me, and Sharon Stones' one dramatic scene at the end is literally covered up by her ridiculous fat suit.

This movie objectifies girls to an unnecessary end. Now, I wasn't there, I don't know if all of these girls actually hung all over the guys and made out with their necks and chests constantly, and did nothing but laugh and scream, but I doubt it. However, in this movie, that is ALL that they do. There is one girl that actually seems to have a working brain and is freaked out by the kidnapping, whereas every other girl in the movie acts like complete and utter idiots, and I'm saying that they don't even function as humans, but rather as some sub-race. It's embarassing, and I don't really know why this decision was made.

I had also feared this movie would go the way of Harsh Times, and just so the guys partying, getting wasted, and doing stupid stuff, and at the beginning, I thought that was what it was going to do. For example, everyone is partying at Johnny Trueloves' house, and Shawn Hatosy (one of the members of Trueloves' posse) is drinking and trying to make out with girls for about five minutes. It's just that for five long minutes. I understood that the guy was an idiot after about 20 seconds, but it just dragged on and on. However, this sort of thing ended, and the movie moved forward without getting mired in this sort of subject matter again.

Alpha Dog was a pretty interesting movie that had some bad decisions made during the filming obviously. After seeing Bully, nothing about this movie phased me. Bully still is the most disturbing movie I have ever seen, and it covers much of the same ground as Alpha Dog. Alpha Dog has better acting and is more mainstream, but it didn't affect me on the same level as Bully.