Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Alpha Dog
[Warning: this review contains spoilers]
I bought a copy of this movie¿ ¡ It would take several viewings to properly figure out what’s going on but the language and debauchery portrayed on screen is so blatant and in your face who would want to? Somehow the story of the kidnap and ultimate murder of a young teen gets lost in all the drugs, alcohol and partying. This is the story of two worlds colliding in Southern California. One is Upper Middle Class, cosseted, straight-laced; the other driven by drugs, alcohol, and excess. These two worlds collide when Zach is impulsively kidnapped as a marker for his brother’s drug debts. This is not a story based on Stockholm syndrome; chaffing under the restraint imposed upon him by his parent’s lifestyle Zach takes to his new life like a duck to water. Zach is not locked in a barred window back room; he participates freely in all the activities and could have walked away from it all at any time but he’s having so much fun he doesn’t want to. In fact, at one point he proves that as a martial arts black belt he can land his ‘captor’ on his keister at will.
Access to the complete details of the factual case upon which this movie is based and the publicity that made it common knowledge in California seems to lead the director to gloss over the manhunt for both the captors and the ‘victim’. Too much prior knowledge seems to be taken for granted and what we get is an inside look at a drug den where tattooed, narcotized, foul-mouthed dealers party til they puke or pass out and do so many drugs they can’t even get a “hard on”. The police investigation and the anguish of the parents is an after-thought. Right up to the point where he is driven to a gravel pit, hands and mouth duct-taped, whacked from behind and his body riddled with bullets from an automatic weapon the reality of his situation is lost on Zach, he seems to be an unwitting participant in his own abduction. This final act is so surreal and senseless that neither the viewer nor Zach see it coming until moments before it happens. Zach is so in denial he doesn’t even struggle when his hands are taped. The perpetrators are so drug-addled they haven’t thought through the consequences of their actions—having abducted Zach “disposing” of the evidence only makes a serious crime heinous.
There may be a serious message here but it is lost in a haze of crystal meth, alcohol, and sex.
