Alpha Dog Review

There is something wrong with American, the American dream.  This generation of young people has seemingly lost it way, thrown off course by too much idle time, too much affluence, and a way too lax moral compass.  What is the blame for this cesspool?  What has happened to America?  We are fast becoming a society ruled by random violence and lack of respect for the law, civility, or life.  Enter Alpha Dog, a kaleidoscope on incivility, drug, ransom sex and violence set in the backdrop of sunny California.

Alpha Dog is at times hard to watch, not so much for the content, but because I really didn't want to believe that societal discourse has fallen to such a debasing extreme.  None of these young people respected anything; themselves each other, their parents, and certainly not the institutions that make up American society.  They lived, and indeed continue to live, in a world all their own divorced as it were from the mainstream of the society in whole.                   

Cinematically Alpha Dog is well written and acted; grudging kudos to Mr. Timberlake!  And the movie does a good job of laying out the back-story that led up to the kidnapping and eventual murder of a 15-year old boy.  Great acting makes Alpha Dog compelling yet depressing, and proves that American teenagers can not only be witless, but sadly ruthless as well.