By Stephen Hunter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 12, 2007; C01

The wheeziest of ancient conceits in popular entertainment is that old thing about the master criminal and his brilliantly planned and executed crime. It almost never happens. The real world's criminals are dumber, duller, more banal, more sordid and, oh yes, dumber, as Nick Cassavetes's brilliant "Alpha Dog" points out.

It's no comedy, however, defying another pop cult tradition of gangs who couldn't shoot or plot straight. Instead, it's in the near-documentary true crime genre, unsentimental and dyspeptic, brilliantly performed (by, among others, Justin Timberlake who's so good I won't even get snarky about 'N Sync). Anybody who's ever been touched by a crime will recognize the pattern that Cassavetes uncovers, the random chaos, the improvisational nature, the sheer ugliness of the event.

Cassavetes, who wrote as well as directed, has an anthropological feel for the banality of the quotidian as it's practiced in the sunny climes of Southern California, circa 1999, among people with too much money for which they've done far too little. He effortlessly evokes a marginal culture of prosperous ne'er-do-wells indulged by uninterested parents who, if they want to be anything, want to be their kids' buddies. There's too much easy pleasure around for anyone to do anything except whatever he feels like doing at that moment. Plus, there is no end to the fascinating tattoos that one can have drilled into one's body. Cassavetes, son of the great actor-director John Cassavetes and the great actress Gena Rowlands, makes you see how stupid it all was. That said, the movie suffers from an uncertain structure. It begins as a mock documentary, complete to interviews and banter between the filmmakers and the actors playing the roles, but then it seems to forget that conceit for the longest time and just go on to straight, dramatized feature filmmaking. Then, toward the end, it remembers that it's a fake documentary and jets back into form.

The movie tells the story of Jesse James Hollywood (real name), here fictionalized as Johnny Truelove, who at 20, was the youngest man in history to make it to the FBI's Most Wanted list.

Johnny, played with cunning, simmering rage by Emile Hirsch, is (as was Jesse James Hollywood) a marijuana dealer and penny-ante loan shark successful enough to afford a nice house. His criminal tendencies evidently come from a father (played by Bruce Willis under a patently phony wig that expresses his character's vanity) who admits to being, yes, a failure in parenting. Having a dope dealer for a son would seem to amount to a parenting mistake.

Johnny's best virtue as a criminal is his mental toughness. He is the alpha: He knows what must be done, he's not afraid to give people the bad news, he commands a small fleet of SoCal tattooed riffraff from what appear to be decent homes but so pliable they're pathetic. Indeed, the movie itself seems to see a society given over to decadence, unmoored to moral codes, casually profane (extreme profanity throughout), with no sense of any obligation except satisfaction of the appetite. The movie is nothing if not profoundly depressing and it makes you think of the kids in Iraq with a renewed respect and admiration.

One of Johnny's transactions goes wrong, and a miscreant named Jake Mazursky (the real kid's name was Ben Markowitz), who owes him a pitiful sum, defies him, refusing to pay because a scam of his didn't work and he can't borrow more money from his father. Mazursky is played with demonic intensity by Ben Foster. His fury is riveting and it makes the movie tick and hum, so it's a shame when, halfway through, he mostly leaves the movie. Johnny and Jake, now enemies, beat up not each other but each other's sofas, then look to do some real damage. Johnny and his pals come across little Zack Mazursky (Anton Yelchin), Jake's younger brother. Zack, 15, isn't a part of this 'burban underworld; he's a dewy high school boy who still drinks milk with his meals. But Johnny is looking for leverage to get his money back, so he and his droogs pick up the boy.

Hmmm. Johnny, didja know kidnapping is a federal beef? It will not go away. It's not a joke. It's for real. You have just made a serious career mistake, son.

But if Johnny doesn't get it, neither does Zack. The gist of the movie is his strange incarceration, which might be called an ordeal by 24-hour party people. Among Johnny's mooks, the leading wastrel is Frankie (Timberlake), who takes a shine to Zack. The two of them go off on a weekend-long orgy of drugs, beer, partying, and various other pleasures. Meanwhile, Johnny is beginning to see what an idiot he's been and tries to figure a way out.

You can feel "Alpha Dog" building toward tragedy, even as nobody wants it to. Everyone has some small notion that what is contemplated is, like, you know, wrong; but still, Johnny is the only one who has any will at all, and the poor human electrons in orbit around his nucleus lack any strength to deny that will.

What it boasts most of all is extraordinary naturalism, not particularly flattering. Sharon Stone has a brilliant, harsh turn as Zack's mom, and both Willis and old Harry Dean Stanton have good if brief spins as the elder generations of Trueloves. But the movie belongs to its youngsters, and some great ensemble acting. No one needs to be a star or hero; all are content to issue extremely convincing duplicates of real, if sordid, even tragic, behavior. That doesn't mean it's an easy thing to sit through and when you figure out the squalor to which it aims, it becomes its own kind of ordeal. It's so tough it makes you wonder how anybody survives the disease called youth.

Alpha Dog (117 minutes, at area theaters) is rated R for pervasive drug use, violence, sexual themes, nudity, and extreme, pervasive profanity.