Movie review: Alpha Dog
May 29, 2007 10:55 am Book reviews, recommendsI am not a good watcher of situation comedies. I mean the ones where all the humor is based on someone hiding something from someone else; like when someone ends up with 2 dates for the evening and all the humor is based on close calls. Whenever I watch those with Paul, I invariably say “Why doesn’t he just tell so and so?’ I genuinely wonder why anyone would keep themselves in a high pressure situation when it could all be cleared up so easily. (This drives Paul nuts, by the way.)
We watched ALPHA Dog last night. This movie was no comedy. But it was a situation that could have been cleared up so easily. And it’s a true story.
Do I recommend it? Well, yes and no.
Yes as a study of sin. Yes as a study of a situation that honestly, until the very end could have been redeemed. ANY SECOND. And Paul and I really liked it in that we were enthralled and the time went by fast.
No, because I am still disturbed today. Still thinking about it – it wasn’t just a movie. It was shell shock. Also, knowing my usual blog friends, I should also warn you that the film holds the fourth highest total of most uses of the “F” word (367) in a feature length film, with the word being used more times per minute than even Casino. Violence, sex, completely disturbing.
But we didn’t even notice, somehow. I was just glued to the spiraling situation. “Just come clean- please! It’s only gonna get worse. You may think it’s gonna be bad if you fess up but it’s gonna be immeasurably worse if you keep going.”
And what I am ruminating on now is that’s exactly what happens when we protect a sin. When we don’t wanna get caught in a lie or an action. We just spiral. When we care more about ourselves than anything else; Or we care more about the wrong things: in this case, 1 dirtball over a 15 year old kid. In our own cases, our public image more than truth. BUT at ANY SECOND it would be better if we would just come clean regardless of the consequences.
It’s also what happens when we don’t notice how dangerous our situation is because we are interested in the sex, the partying, the feeling cool. This boy could have walked away. But he stayed. AUGHHHHH! He prefered this to going home and getting in trouble for being caught with pot. We were completely shocked at the end- we didn’t know the story ahead of time.
If you don’t want to subject yourself to the movie, read the story here. Read all the chapters, not just the first page. You won’t believe it.
http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/celebrity/jesse_james_hollywoo/1.html
