Alpha Dog may quickly be dismissed from the legitamacy list--if you so choose--based on the fact that a former member of N'sync stars, or the fact that a former member of 2+gether also graces the credits. You may also dismiss it for its unapologtic portrayal of the pseudo riches of california's seemingly soul-less generation of pop teens, hooked on a materialism and consumption diet fit for the breaking of lives and global records.
At the outset of the film you may laugh or cynically criticise the actors, the plot development, or the filmmaker's glorification of california's teen drug users. But if you hang on and listen to the dialogue; if you'll sit quietly and allow the film to finish... you'll be led to a lengthy dialogue on a great many things--not the least of which is a question about ourselves. Although the crimes executed in this film are extraordinary-- the events predicating those crimes are not-- and neither are the criminals. The film intimately details a few days in the lives of ordinary (rich) kids. Kids. Relatively nice kids I might add, who (although messed up) are just young guys/girls from the burbs, selling weed, partying, and all foolishly following one another in cyclical futility. Not at all uncommon characters. But these nice kids--who we're brought to like throughout the film-- end up adding a monstrous act to their personal life resume's.
Alpha Dog creates a discussion around deeply personal themes with great tension: How is it that the broken parts of the world around me are somehow at home, even within myself? There are times we all wish ill things upon our "enemies"--but do not follow through. Do we really have control on the outcomes of our thoughts/actions/anger? How wide is the separation between ordinary man and the people we call "murderers"? Are we all--somewhere---guilty of such crimes?