Metacritic-Rezensionen

In his best film to date, Nick Cassavetes directs with ferocious energy, taking scenes past their logical stopping points and pushing his actors (particularly Foster, who can be as terrifying as Edward Norton in "American History X") to, but never over, the precipice of absurdity.

Alpha Dog isn't a happy movie, but it's dramatically solid and the impressions it leaves will not be easily shaken.

If nothing else, Alpha Dog's worth a look for the performance of Justin Timberlake, the moral center of a movie sorely in need of some conscience. Already a gifted comic actor--his Saturday Night Live appearances are now anticipated events--he proves himself able to go to a pitch-black place.

Writer-director Nick Cassavetes' sprawling dramatization recklessly blurs the line between reconstruction and reality in ways that are admittedly interesting, if more than a little artistically suspect.

For all of the credibility of the performances (or at least the teens), it all feels like recycled social commentary.

Timberlake walks off with the movie. Too bad it's not worth stealing.

Cassavetes throws in everything he can recycle to grab a core-demo viewer -- slutty teens making out, blaring rock music, guns, split screens.

All the bright colors Cassavetes splashes on the canvas don't make Alpha Dog art.

The cretins rule in Alpha Dog, which has much the same entertainment value you get from watching monkeys fling scat at one another in a zoo or reading the latest issue of Star magazine. Of course a little of that nasty stuff may land on you, but such are the perils of voyeurism.

It's a soggy drama said to be inspired by actual events – too serious to be trashy, too trashy to be serious.