Oh boy, this was the worst movie I watched in a long time. It's pure botch and annoyed me to the point that I almost left the cinema halfway trough if not for the person who was with me. It was truly painful to watch!
I don't even know where to start but the worst part is definitely the laughable dialogue, adding an almost comic like "quality" to this crap flick. There is a scene where Timberlake urges a distressed Dominique Swain (?) to repeat something like "I've got everything under control" which had me laugh out loud. Or when Swain shouts "This shirt is cool, Bob Marley is cool but kidnapping isn't cool" it made me cringe in my seat! There's plenty of "fuck", "Faggot", "bitch", almost every other sentence included the F-word; it added up and went on my nerves. The movie lacks direction and the cut seems often random and unmotivated. It is obvious that Nick Cassavetes took here the same approach as his father did in many of his Indie productions and gave the actors much room for improvisations which resulted in them screaming, pushing, cursing and fighting each other till you get a headache. The story is totally predictable, there's lots of bad acting (Heather Wahlquist was surprisingly good and funny though) and even accomplished actors like Harry Dean Stanton or Sharon Stone couldn't save this mess. Especially Foster really overdid his role most of the time. The soundtrack fits the story of a bunch of teen wannabee gangstas well.
Alpha Dog reminded me of Larry Clark's "Bully" only that the latter is still a much better movie despite Clark's manipulative and hypocritical exploitation of his protagonists and his playing the shock card about the oh so disturbing state of the nation's youth. But I prefer to watch a couple of totally unmotivated full frontals and zooming in on teen crotches/asses embedded in MTV-aesthetics over having to sit trough lines that had me wince in pain!
Only way I can explain the surprisingly good IMDb rating is loads of Timberlake groupies pushing the 10 vote button.
I don't even know where to start but the worst part is definitely the laughable dialogue, adding an almost comic like "quality" to this crap flick. There is a scene where Timberlake urges a distressed Dominique Swain (?) to repeat something like "I've got everything under control" which had me laugh out loud. Or when Swain shouts "This shirt is cool, Bob Marley is cool but kidnapping isn't cool" it made me cringe in my seat! There's plenty of "fuck", "Faggot", "bitch", almost every other sentence included the F-word; it added up and went on my nerves. The movie lacks direction and the cut seems often random and unmotivated. It is obvious that Nick Cassavetes took here the same approach as his father did in many of his Indie productions and gave the actors much room for improvisations which resulted in them screaming, pushing, cursing and fighting each other till you get a headache. The story is totally predictable, there's lots of bad acting (Heather Wahlquist was surprisingly good and funny though) and even accomplished actors like Harry Dean Stanton or Sharon Stone couldn't save this mess. Especially Foster really overdid his role most of the time. The soundtrack fits the story of a bunch of teen wannabee gangstas well.
Alpha Dog reminded me of Larry Clark's "Bully" only that the latter is still a much better movie despite Clark's manipulative and hypocritical exploitation of his protagonists and his playing the shock card about the oh so disturbing state of the nation's youth. But I prefer to watch a couple of totally unmotivated full frontals and zooming in on teen crotches/asses embedded in MTV-aesthetics over having to sit trough lines that had me wince in pain!
Only way I can explain the surprisingly good IMDb rating is loads of Timberlake groupies pushing the 10 vote button.
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