“Alpha Dogs” (**/5) by Boo Allen, Rated R, 115 minutes, Opens Jan. 12

“Alpha Dogs” falls into that limited category of films that, up until now, has been filled by Larry Clark (“Kids,” “Bully”). This sort of film usually includes a gritty and raw, yet always unpleasant, look at a small segment of disaffected young people.
After spending nearly two strident hours in the company of “Alpha Dog”’s cast of characters, old and young, almost all of whom are unlikable, here’s what the film from writer/director Nick Cassavetes eventually teaches: 1. drugs are bad. 2. guns are worse 3. kids with bad parents are likely to turn out worse than kids with good parents and 4. parents should pay more attention when their children start acting erratically. Class dismissed.
An examination of and a reveling in erratic, youthful behavior makes up the entirety of “Dogs.” And, although it often seems extreme, some kids somewhere obviously act like the depraved lot seen in the film because it was based on a true story.
But it’s hard to embrace any of these Los Angeles area youngsters, as they deal drugs, beat each other up, threaten each other, and talk in their own inexplicable and often indecipherable street code.
Emile Hirsch plays Johnny, the leader of a pack of misfits who pledges their loyalty to him. Why they follow him is never understood, much less explained.
Through a series of happenstance events, Johnny’s gang nabs Zack (Anton Yelchin), the younger brother of one of Johnny’s gang rivals. The captivity is played for laughs, however, as Zack loses his virginity, drinks a lot of beer, skinny dips with various nymphets, and takes mucho drugs.
The film disintegrates as the building main question becomes what Johnny is going to do with Zack. The answer provides the film’s few engaging moments, just before it spirals out of control.
The ending “solution” will only shock, or interest, those still tuned in at the end when director Cassavetes loses all credibility and ends his movie with a weeping, near hysterical Sharon Stone in a Jiminy Glick-fatsuit. It’s a bizarre ending to a movie that doesn’t have much going for it anyway.