????hmmm

I gotta disagree man. Alpha Dog was a good movie, don't get me wrong, but to call this a sh*ttier version of it is kinda oversimplifying. They were pretty different. I mean, once the kid was grabbed up I immediately thought of Alpha Dog, and the almost annoying similarities escalated all the way up until the scene in the woods (beach?) when I realized that it MUST be based on the same story. But it was a pretty damn different take on it, a different style, and when viewed as its own film, independent of Alpha Dog, you've gotta admit it's a pretty *beep* cool movie. It had surprisingly good acting (like Ash's pissed off mom - only in it for a couple of minutes but that was pretty damn real). One performance that grabbed me as weak, however, was the chick dealer (don't remember her name at the moment). She was hot, but a few lines jumped out as a reminder that she was just an actress TRYING to act. And acting aside, it was good storytelling, excellent visual style and editing. And it had a respectable, likable protagonist in the narrating character, despite the generally unrespectable nature of his lifestyle. All in all a solid movie. And when I saw the budget on another thread, I was even more impressed.

And for the record, I wasn't on any of that good green medicine... Haven't been in a couple years. Court ordered... Lol.