r/movies • u/Low_Insurance_1603 • 18h ago
Discussion Watched ‘Alpha Dog’ (2006) several years ago freaked me out so much I’ve never been able to nor had any desire to watch again!
Younger Bro thought it would be a trip to check out Justin Timberlake in AD. I nonchalantly said I’d pass and wanted to see something more current. TBH I did not have the cojones to admit that this movie freaked me the f**k out when I first watched it-this was after released to video! If I recall it’s “loosely” based on a true story? I lived in LA during this time and “knew of” the “character types” to a distant extent. I don’t want to give too much away but I do remember the naïveté of the kid brother I think it was and the shocking outcome. This movie completely shook me to my core! To this day I remember being sooo distraught and disturbed I cannot bring myself to watch again almost 20 years later. I’m in my feelings composing this post. Did this movie affect anyone else this way? Is there another movie that affected you in this manner?
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u/Dustmopper 18h ago
RIP Anton Yelchin
Emile Hirsch and Justin Timberlake are good in this, but (as always) Ben Foster is phenomenal
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u/greenufo333 13h ago
Don't forget Shawn Hatosy. He's great in animal kingdom
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u/Kayjaywt 10h ago
And Southland.
Really enjoyed that series, wish it got a final season to close out the storylines.
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u/Rare_Hydrogen 17h ago
Ben Foster is criminally underrated.
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u/Dustmopper 17h ago
I just watched “3:10 to Yuma” the other night and he’s great in that too
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u/Boomdiddy 11h ago
He’s great in everything he’s in. Even if the rest of the movie is shit, you can count on Foster to put on a great performance.
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u/Unencrypted_Thoughts 12h ago
Grew up watching him in Flash Forward, he always kills it in everything he's in.
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u/TheGardiner 10h ago
Just FYI Ben Foster is a huge diva and drama queen on set. I’ve heard it wasn’t just isolated to the one I was on with him. Extremely disrespectful and dismissive of other people on set, not professional, wastes a lot of peoples time.
Don’t meet your heroes I guess. Great actor, not so great of a person.
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u/bespectacledboobs 17h ago
When literally every time someone is mentioned it’s followed by them being “criminally underrated,” are they really criminally underrated?
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u/Brother_Clovis 15h ago
Do you get this bothered when someone says 'I'm so hungry, I could eat a horse.'?
It's an expression. They're not actually looking to press charges.
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u/Rare_Hydrogen 15h ago
Just because one person says that an actor is underrated, does that mean that actor cannot be underrated?
That's just shitty logic
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u/gabawhee 12h ago
I mean in all his best movies he plays a criminal so I think in this case it makes sense
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u/Verylazyperson 18h ago
Yes this movie hit me hard as a late teen watching my peers get involved with drugs on various levels. I saw something play out in real life around the same time I saw this film --I knew an upper middle class white kid from a pleasant suburban home who got shot in the head and killed for like 2 ounces of weed and it was just....damn what a waste.
"we become what we pretend to be" --kurt vonnegut
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u/AlexIsWhack 17h ago
Yeah this is very much based on a true story. I went to the same high school as the kid who was killed. The younger brother of the drug dealer was in my same grade. Had known him since around the 7th grade. He was a good kid regardless of his brother's criminal behavior.
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u/CQ1_GreenSmoke 18h ago
The fact that it’s mostly a true story and the thought of how things can go wrong and get so fucked up and out of control so quickly was always fascinating to me.
There are certain parts of the movie that I enjoy rewatching due to the drama of the scene & how it was filmed. The phone call between Emile Hirsch & Ben Foster for instance is pretty epic.
That said, I’ve never been able to watch the ending a second time. And I would probably trade my positive memories of the movie to have never seen it, if I had the choice.
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u/FaithlessnessSame357 13h ago
This movie has Sharon Stone’s best performance of her career at the very end. Her grief in the last interview is haunting.
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u/droogg94 15h ago
I saw this movie in theaters back in the day when I was 14, and while it definitely impacted me emotionally, it didn't have quite as heavy of an effect for me. Really good movie though, I've watched it again once or twice in the years since.
One movie that I watched around the same timeframe that DID deeply disturb me was Boys Don't Cry. I couldn't sleep for a few days after watching it. The images of what the main character goes through at the end stuck with me for a while, and I think it's the most a movie's ever affected me mentally. Needless to say, I have not watched it since haha
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u/WildcardBetches 14h ago
I still haven't been able to watch this since Anton Yelchin passed away. It would probably kill me. Though when it first came out, I really liked it.
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u/SilkkTheShocke 17h ago
I love this movie. It was pretty accurate. This movie is underrated, it felt so real. Sad as hell to watch.
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u/MyDogBitz 13h ago
For me it was District 9. Great movie, really underrated IMO but I found the aliens to be so disturbing that I couldn't sit through it again. LOL.
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u/emperor32 18h ago
I don’t remember much of the story but I remember the feelings, no plans to rewatch
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u/canadiancarlin 11h ago
I think one of the more jarring aspects for me at least was the actual execution scene, and how for a brief moment we see the POV of the victim. The visual blinking and blurring out, like a lightbulb going out, that's what stayed with me. I know it's been done before but fuck if that wasn't sobering to watch.
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u/captain_flak 9h ago
I’m right there with you. I thought Timberlake was great in it, actually. I watched it with my dad and afterwards he told me and my brother that he would help us no matter how deep into something we were.
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u/knivesout0 4h ago
Man I love this movie, it’s in my top 5. I will watch it over and over.
The opening credits always get me teary eyed, every single time.
And the interview with the mother at the end, where she has clearly lost her marbles.
Ben Foster just beating the shit out of everyone at the party.
And sweet Anton.. RIP
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u/Arthurlurk1 16h ago
This is my all time fav movie. Crazy to stumble across a random post about it.
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u/starwars_and_guns 12h ago
It really annoyed me that the kid was killed by a machine gun in the movie. Irl he was just shot with a pistol and its super weird they changed it to make it more hollywood
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u/StellaZaFella 18h ago
I’ve heard the loved ones of the victim were very upset at how true to life the movie was.
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u/waynechriss 18h ago
Yeah, at the very least it covers the general outline of what happened with the victim (getting kidnapped to force his brother to pay a debt, going to parties with many witnesses who saw no wrongdoing because he was having fun, then ultimately being murdered) and the murder was pretty much exactly how it was described from the real life incident.
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u/CommonEarly4706 16h ago
no they are not! they were at the official viewing. it’s in the book Susan wrote. nicks mom
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u/StellaZaFella 16h ago
I don’t know, the Wikipedia entry for their reaction seems to indicate it was difficult to deal with:
“Susan Markowitz attempted suicide three times.Jeff Markowitz elaborated, "She is so tortured by what happened that she has tried to take her own life. The last thing that either of us want is to see this picture. How would any loving parent feel about a Hollywood movie that glamorizes their son's death and allows celebrities to cash in on a brutal, evil murder?"
Nonetheless, both Susan and Jeff attended the film's premiere, and Susan stated she was moved by Anton Yelchin's portrayal of Zack (Nick). After the screening, she embraced Sharon Stone, who played Olivia (Susan).”
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u/CommonEarly4706 16h ago
The suicide attempts were way long before the movie came to be. I remember watching this story on dateline at the end the there is a clip of Susan talking about her mental health struggles same as the movie. Yes it was challenging for them, but in the end they were happy about the portrayal. That’s why people should read my stolen son. Susan is very forthcoming in the book. Jeff has passed away from cancer, a couple years back
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u/Sail-Away 13h ago
Living in Pomona around the time this movie came out hit differently. it felt wayyyy to close to home. Nonetheless it was a solid movie.
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u/Fragrant-Hamster-325 12h ago
Yeah totally fucked up. Just a bunch of spoiled rich wanna be “drug lords”. If they just stopped and thought about what they were doing it could’ve all been avoided. All for a little bit of money that didn’t really mean shit to Jonny Truelove because his dad was rich.
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u/bbbbbbbb678 10h ago
Pretty much a Fargo - esque movie where shit gets out of hand so quickly with people who are way out of their league.
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u/drood420 9h ago
Emile Hirsche did such a good job in that movie, I couldn’t stand him for years because of the character.
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u/SouthlandMax 8h ago
All they had to do was take the kid to six flags. Get a bunch of photos of them all on Rollercoasters. They could hand taken him home said they were just playing around. Asked the cops the pictures and they could have walked.
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u/judgeridesagain 2h ago
This was the first and last film I ever watched.
I've never been able nor desired to watch another.
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u/awyastark 46m ago
One of my best friends in college used to get very drunk and sad and one of the tangents she would go on was how traumatizing this movie was and how the dead kid reminded her of her deceased brother. So yeah!
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u/CommonEarly4706 16h ago
read the book. what shocks me is so many people knew what was going on and did nothing about this situation before it came to this ending. the book gives you a lot of the back story and isn’t as graphic. it’s written by nick’s mother
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u/lokiandbutters 18h ago
I remember watching that movie a few times so long ago. Seemed like an okay movie, not too great or memorable.
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u/VooDooChile1983 16h ago
I wanted to watch it but seeing a cast of soft looking people “acting hard” just made me think someone tried to make a serious version of Malibu’s Most Wanted.
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u/braves-geek 17h ago
I walked into my living room one time to find my roommate jacking off to one of the nude scenes and I haven't been able to watch the movie since.