Alpha Dog

Watched Alpha Dog with Derrick at night at The Cathay. Alpha Dog is a real life story of a 15 year old boy, Zack, who is kidnapped while he escapes from his own house after being caught with a weed (marijuana) pipe by his parents.

The culprits had fallen out with a friend, Jake, who owes them money. The situation gets worse after Jake wrecks the house of the group leader, Johnny. They chanced upon Jake's brother, Zack, along the streets and decided to use him as a pawn chip so that Jake will return Johnny his money.

Alpha Dog is a hip and young movie depicting Johnny's group of friends and their lifestyle. There are frequent partying, plenty of booze and alcohol, as well as smoking weed and other decadent activities.

The consequences of kidnapping starts to frighten them as they did not want to go to jail over this matter. They resorted in the most callous fashion by snuffing the boy.

There are quite a number of characters in the movie and some of them are one-dimensional like Johnny, Jake and Elvis. Justin Timberlake does not do too badly as an actor fortunately and he portrays his role as the hedonistic and testosterone-fueled Frankie rather well. Anton Yelchin is endearing and likable as the innocent Zack who enjoyed his time hanging out with Frankie and his friends before his unfortunate demise.

The most heartbreaking scene is when the reel life mother of Nicholas Markowitz (portrayed as Zack in the movie) is being interviewed towards the end of the show. It is incredibly sorrowful and heartwrenching for a mother who raised her son for 15 years.

If only they concentrated more on the human drama instead of the booze, weed and sex, this show would be tops.