REEL CRITIC:’Dog’ has no focus, direction

“Alpha Dog” is a film beset by many problems, not the least of which is a lack of focus and direction, much like the group of rudderless youths who are portrayed here.

This film is loosely based on the story of the notorious Jesse James Hollywood, a suspect in a bizarre, drug-related murder who has only recently been extradited to the United States from his hideout in Brazil.

The film opens to an off-screen voice conducting an interview of drug racketeer Sonny Truelove (Bruce Willis) but the film is never developed beyond that as a docudrama.

In any event, a raucous party scene soon takes over the screen and the film sets off in another direction entirely.

Since there is so much partying depicted in this noisy film, the point of the story may be a how-to flick, a celluloid handbook for the aspiring boozer/druggie partyer.

In spite of rather lame attempts to camouflage certain sequences, viewers who follow local news events will probably recognize the similarities in this story to that of the sordid Jesse James Hollywood affair.

Director/screenwriter Nick Cassavetes has shifted the murder scene from the Santa Barbara area out to the high desert by simply shifting the well-known “Fiesta Days” celebration to a fictitious “State Street” in Palm Springs. Local Santa Barbara storefronts and street scenes, however, remain the same.

Aside from the many problems with this film, there are a few pleasant surprises worth noting.

Justin Timberlake’s efforts as Frankie Ballenbarcher, a grungy, tattooed gofer, are quite good. In fact, it was Timberlake who saved this film from the “walk-out” category. He is relaxed on screen and the humorous twists he gives to dicey situations bring depth to an otherwise shallow character. He is a natural in front of the camera.

Ben Foster, as Jake Mazursky, the older brother of hostage/victim Zack Mazursky, is believable as a drug-addled psychopath, whose emotional rampages help to flesh out the punk-rock atmosphere that surrounds most of the characters in this dark feature.

When Foster’s character isn’t careening about in a glassy-eyed meltdown, he can be found bringing himself to the boiling point in a quiet rage. His character is more than a little frightening.

The musical accompaniment throughout “Alpha Dog” is pretty much what I expected; lots of high power, highly amplified, atonal racket. The music sets the tone for the action in Cassavetes’s production and is a large part of the hard-driving emotion that surrounds the dramatic situations.

Despite the professional attempts to manipulate the emotions of the audience vis-a-vis a few clever acting jobs, I found the film to be, on the whole, a failure. The film never seems to be headed in any particular direction, and without direction, there is no resolution.

Rated R for drug use, sexuality, intense violence and nudity, “Alpha Dog” has a running time of 122 minutes.