Alpha Dog (Combo HD DVD and Standard DVD) [HD DVD] | ![Alpha Dog (Combo HD DVD and Standard DVD) [HD DVD]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/512LueHsQCL._SL500_.jpg)
| Director: Nick Cassavetes
Actors: Bruce Willis, Matthew Barry, Emile Hirsch, Fernando Vargas (ii), Vincent Kartheiser
Studio: Universal Studios
Category: DVD
List Price: $26.98
Buy New: $2.90
You Save: $24.08 (89%)
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Rating:  71 reviews
Sales Rank: 10156
Format: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Dubbed)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: HD DVD
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 118 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 6.6 x 5.2 x 0.5
MPN: MCAHD61032681
UPC: 025193268129
EAN: 0025193268129
ASIN: B000NO39G0
Theatrical Release Date: January 12, 2007
Release Date: May 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com
With harrowing intensity, Alpha Dog dramatizes one of the most tragically notorious murders in recent history. Ripped from the headlines, writer-director Nick Cassavetes' flawed but riveting crime drama (a polar opposite to his previous film, the romantic hit The Notebook) is based on the real-life case of Jesse James Hollywood, a drug dealer in California's San Gabriel Valley who, in 2000, became one of the youngest men to appear on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. Names and details have been changed, but the criminal circumstances remain the same: With family links to organized crime, Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsch) is on the warpath against Jake Mazursky (Ben Foster), a sleazebag addict who owes him money. Fate intervenes when Johnny and his stoner pals including Frankie (Justin Timberlake) encounter Jake's 15-year-old half-brother Zack (Anton Yelchin) and hold him as collateral until Jake pays his debts. What begins as a casual, seemingly harmless situation escalates into a crisis of capital crime, as Alpha Dog employs split-screen, docudrama, and mock-documentary interviews to chronicle a tragic tailspin of reckless events and lawless behavior. Cassavetes himself became part of the real-life drama when prosecutors (hoping to locate then-fugitive Jesse James Hollywood, who was captured in 2005) gave him legally controversial access to their case files. Alpha Dog clearly benefits from this inside information, and while the film's grueling depiction of underage squalor (including rampant drug and alcohol abuse) is inevitably off-putting and at least partially exploitative, there's no denying that Cassavetes has worked wonders with a well-chosen ensemble cast including Timberlake, who contrasts his music-industry stardom with a convincing performance as a likable, not-too-bright party animal who quickly gets in over his head. The film is ultimately compromised by Cassavetes' ambitious attempt to cover too much dramatic territory, but like his father John before him, he demonstrates a remarkable skill with actors (including Sharon Stone, Bruce Willis, and Harry Dean Stanton in supporting roles), and Alpha Dog is full of powerful, dangerous moments that aren't easily forgotten. --Jeff Shannon
Product Description
Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 05/01/2007 Run time: 109 minutes Rating: R
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| Customer Reviews: Read 66 more reviews...
 alpha dog July 4, 2009
Brenda Shultz (tennessee, usa)
It's a really great movie. It is based on a true story. Ends really sad. This is a must see. I would like it better without all the cussing.
 Exploiting underage stupidity June 23, 2009
Michael Kerjman (The Earth)
Either it is a technical problem or initial producers' idea, substituting actions with sounds in darkness hardly leads to the better comprehending of a mix of scenes oversaturated with a quest for copulating and drugs while kidnapping and killing younger 15 y.o. half-brother of an addict short of money to repay a debt with.
Not much to watch and not much to write of, surely.
This Dog Bites April 13, 2009
Sir Moneybags McBigballs the 3rd (Oxfordvilletonshireburg)
The murder of 15 year old Nickolas Markowitz in the summer of 2000 by a gang of privileged LA misfits garnered national media attention, and with good cause. The circumstances are a modern example of truth being stranger than fiction and the events and characters feel like they could have been torn from the pages of a forgotten screenplay.
Johnny Truelove and his gang spend their days hopping from one party to the next, mingling with the bored and privileged kids of upper-class Angelians. When Truelove is shorted on a drug deal by the unstable Jake a minor disagreement escalates into a series of increasingly extreme retaliations, culminating in the impromptu kidnapping of Jake's half brother, Nick. Despite having ample opportunities to escape, Nick stays with the group, reveling in his new-found freedom and what he perceives as an exciting, care free life, and ultimately unaware of the fatal conclusion to his adventure.
With the storyline already written for him, all director Cassavetes had to do was get the performances he wanted out of his young cast, which he does with great success. Hirsh's Truelove is a charismatic egomaniac who's psuedo gangster mannerisms conceal a cold and calculating intellect. His right hand man, played surprising well by Timberlake, is affable, cocky and troubled by the notion that he's somehow gotten in over his head. Ben Foster portrays Jake's twitchy, borderline insanity so aptly that he practically explodes off the screen.
AlphaDog received wide critical acclaim, but was condemned by some as being too emotionally detached from its subject matter. Cassavetes offers little in the way of judgment, and chooses instead to approach the story from a neutral, almost documentary-style angle. Some characters, particularly Timberlake's, are cast in a relatively positive light as mere children swept up in situation beyond their control. Nick comes across as having naively walked into the jaws of death, missing ample opportunities to escape and several warnings that his life was in danger. This probably reflects the truth more accurately than your typical black and white analysis of killer and victim, and in my opinion, it is exactly this element that makes the film such a stunning study of how relatively ordinary people can be persuaded to participate in unconscionable acts.
Despite an ending that is preordained AlphaDog manages to hold your attention with excellent performances. Right up to the moment the tek-9 ends his life you can't help but hold on to the hope that the kind and quiet Nick will be spared. Alas, this cautionary tale ends the same way it did in real-life - with several lives ruined and with more than a few nagging questions left unanswered, and one assumes, they will remain that way.
Highly Entertaining October 8, 2008
Marcus T. Brody (Tampa Bay, FL)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I actually went into this movie expecting the worst, since I was told by a close friend of mine that this movie was absolutely horrible. I can say without a shadow of a doubt, that my friend was DEAD wrong. Alpha Dog was highly entertaining, from beginning to end.
Emile Hirsch was absolutely fantastic as Johnny Truelove, and he stole the show with his performance. But I must say, Justin Timberlake did an OUTSTANDING job as well. His performance was so believable, that you'd never know in a million years that he hasn't been acting all of his life.
This movie was based on a very compelling, real life story, which made watching the movie even more intense.
If you're thinking of watching this movie, but haven't seen it yet, because someone told you it stinks, think again. 4 stars all the way.
Outstanding cautionary tale, a message to the madness August 1, 2008
javaman (Warren, OH)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
"Alpha Dog" presents us with the image of a group of teens, and we should rightfully ask, is this the director's, is this the writers' depiction of post-modern American youth, the portrait of a generation, or is it merely the documentary presentation of one group of teens in California circa 1999? If it is the former, then they are making a bold and broad statement indeed. Because we have not seen a picture of youth so enormously depraved and rudderless since the young ruffians of "A Clockwork Orange". In the past we saw crime arise in the American landscape due to the effects of stultifying poverty, and film has done an admirable job of chronicling this cause and effect. In "Alpha Dog" the equation is altogether different. These kids have too much money. What they suffer from, what they have not the least faintest idea of--is the influence of a moral example in their lives. These parents, with the exception of young Zach's mother, are enveloped in careless lives of hedonistic selfishness, and they transmit this pattern of living with devastating effect to their offspring, with the result that their children's characters become the likenesses of amoral wasteland which they observe so clearly in their elders. The father treats the teenage son like a drinking buddy, a partner in debauchery, then upbraids him in the morning for not paying rent. Kids do not feel loved, so they seek to fill the emptiness with narcotics; they seek the twisted empowerment of a thug's life. Cassavetes does very well in capturing the chain of cause and effect from parent to child and the ramifications of generational neglect and parental abdication. That this is so egregiously obvious is in the depiction of the teens' socializing--there is no attempt(save the exception of Zack), as there usually is with teenagers, to cover up or conduct their excursions into vice on the sly, for fear of being discovered and punished. Rather the teens immerse themselves in debauchery, in broad daylight, not even reveling in it, as simply just going about their business, with not even the slightest notion that they might in fact be chastised or taken into account for their behavior. Again one wonders whether this is an accurate estimate of the lives of a majoirty of American teens, or simply a case study in itself.
All in all, despite its flaws, this is a very good film, heartrending and sad, one almost totally suffused through and through with tragedy and evil. To my mind there were some marvelous performances. One earlier reviewer, whose piece I respect very much as a fine analysis of the film, characterized Ben Foster's performance as one of the film's chief liabilities. I feel it is one of the film's greatest strengths--a powerful performance of equal parts desperation, rage and intensity, it cemented the whole film for me. From his growing body of work we can see that Foster is one of our finest up-and-coming young actors. Is he over the top in his reading of Jake? As the earlier reviewer put it, Jake is, after all, a psycho--but then why wouldn't his character, mentally warped and then his neuroses inflamed so much the more by narcotics, be over the top in some sense? Moreover, his performance for me exuded a magnitude of intensity, rather than gratuitous bravado, as an over-the-top character might. Moreover, as the earlier reviewer pointed out, the film's emphasis was upon the ramifications of parental irresponsibility, rather than a celebration of teen hedonism and violence--and indeed, it is this irresponsibility which is the truest culprit of the whole film. The shocking irony was that the only child of the only parent who was really interested in being a parent, perhaps too much so, was murdered. How terrible--and Justin Timberlake will in fact attract teens to this film, with the question presenting itself, will they understand it to be a study of the consequences of parental irresponsibility, or will they merely take the film's gratuitous and repugnant depiction of teen debauchery as the standard definition of adolescence? Who can tell, other than to say our prayers go out to the mother of this poor boy who was killed. The carelessness and selfishness of those who perhaps never should have been parents clearly bears unspeakably tragic consequences for all of society and most ironically, as "Alpha Dog" reveals, for those parents who try conscientiously to protect their children from the senseless evil of kids whose aimless and neglected lives have given them no moral compass to live by. An excellent cautionary tale to all parents, ever more powerful because it is true, but aside from its real artistic merits the film will serve a benevolent purpose if it is contemplated seriously by those parents whose conduct could benefit most from its message.
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