Alpha Dog

Its originality lies in the fact that it depicts white middle-class kids on the loose, calling their women bitches and listening endlessly to violent, misogynist and homophobic black rap.

Nick Cassavetes' film combines an aimless ramble through juvenile depravity in the affluent suburbs of LA and a quite disturbing evocation of the true-life murder of an adolescent boy in 1999.

You know you're in trouble the second you take a look at Bruce Willis's fake liver spots.

Overall though, it's a messy, superficial affair: it lacks focus, shifts uneasily in tone, and shoehorns in star names (Sharon Stone, Bruce Willis) to little effect.

True, Alpha Dog is a film with no manners. But it has great nerve. What's truly impressive is how the splintered story is buried by individual performances.

It suffers from ADD, but there's some terrific stuff in here. Leaving 15 minutes from the end and saving yourself a lumbering coda may improve enjoyment.

This inspired-by-reality tale is essentially an emotional snuff film. It's the kind of misguided effort a middle-aged director indulges in when he wants to reinvent himself as edgy.

Cassavetes' film is pure Hollywood fiction and sensationalism mixed with some sense of reality, but hell I enjoyed it a great deal...