What’s this all about?
In 2016, director Paul Schrader (a writer on Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The Last Temptation of Christ, and the director of an Exorcist prequel) told the story of three bumbling idiots, making their way in the world. The reasons for their friendship are never really explained, but they are inseparable.
One is bald, and prone to violence. Another is neurotic, a little weepy, and prone to violence. The third is the “leader” of the bunch, but is no smarter than the others, and is, shockingly, prone to violence. Through their incompetence and misunderstanding of basic human concepts, they fail at everything they attempt, often with outlandish ramifications.
No, this isn’t another Three Stooges revival. It’s Dog Eat Dog, a crime/caper film in which three former convicts try to pull “one big score” to get out of a life of petty crime. Predictably, the plans fall apart, everything goes wrong, and pretty much everyone gets shot.
On paper, this pitch, along with a strong cast, sounds like it would make a great Guy Ritchie movie. Or, a really mediocre Paul Schrader movie.
Who is Nick in this one?
Nick plays “Troy,” the recently-released-from-prison leader of the crew of felons. He dresses better than the others, and is marginally more sensible. He is, however, terminally stupid. He indulges in some fantasy that he both looks and sounds like Humphrey Bogart, and fantasizes about taking prostitutes on exotic vacations. Nick delivers a supremely believable performance as a man who is about half as smart as he thinks he is.
Who else is in this one?
Willem Dafoe (“Elias” from Platoon) plays “Mad Dog.” He’s an insane, hyper-violent little guy, who can’t stay out of trouble, and worries about his interpersonal relations. Willem Dafoe is one of the greatest currently working actors, and he goes all in with his performance here. The acting isn’t the problem with this movie.
Christopher Matthew Cook (I’ve never seen him before) plays “Diesel,” the biggest, and strongest of the trio. I call him out here because I’ve literally never seen this actor in anything before, but he absolutely holds his own with Cage and Dafoe. Again, the acting isn’t the problem with this movie, and Cook does a great job.
Paul Schrader (the director of this movie) cast himself as “El Greco,” the Greek crime boss. Gross.
Did you see that?
After Mad Dog is killed, Troy and Diesel experience what seems to be a shared flashback of their time together (which included multiple prison stints and crimes).
Featured most prominently in this flashback is what appears to be a half naked ketchup and mustard fight, in which the men, seemingly in a hotel room, squirt each other with large amounts of ketchup and mustard from diner-style bottles, while they all laugh.
The men are in various states of undress.
What the actual fuck? -Michael
This entire movie falls under this category. I’m not sure what was going on with the writing and directing choices here. Is this suppose to be a surrealist type of thing, like the David Lynch movies? I will admit that I don’t like or understand the movies in this genre that are widely considered to be done extremely well, so it’s possible that I am simply not the audience, but the entire movie was weird and confusing as fuck. -Sarah
What were Nick’s best parts?
During the “planning” phase of the heist, Nick gives his men a rousing speech in the back room of a pool hall/strip club. It’s actually a pretty good, reasonable speech in which Nick posits that they undertake a high risk kidnapping in return for a reward high enough to leave the life of crime. He further proposes that the risky nature of this crime means that the mean have to accept that they will either succeed, or die, as none of them can bear the lengthy prison sentence to follow capture.
It’s well-delivered, and provides some back story and motivation from the otherwise haphazard story. -Michael
There is a scene where Nick is waiting for a mother to come home. This is mostly unspoken, but I thought Nick get an exceptional job with portraying the waiting and initial approach to the mother once she walked in. -Sarah
What were Nick’s worst parts?
When Nick tells the men that he’s going to go find them a big job, he utters the line, “I’ll get us such a good job it’ll take your tits off.”
He delivers it in his familiar manic but goofy style, but the line is played as dead serious.
I feel like Nick and the director must have had a debate about whether or not this line should have been delivered seriously, and the wrong person won. -Michael
The acting in this movie was actually very good; even great at times. Nick did a great and consistent job, at the same time the writing and directing was so bad and I disliked the movie so much, that trying to pick a scene just on Nick needing improvement is hard for me. I think the scenes I disliked the most were due to factors other than Nick’s acting, but I’m not sure how to separate it in my mind.
So all that being said, I think the scene where Nick starts to fight the female cop outside the grocery store was just awkward and not done well. Now whether Nick could have stepped up his physical acting to improve this, or if it was done in the directing and editing, I’m not sure, but I felt this moment could have been handled better. It is the beginning of the end after all. Of course the end of the movie is just odd, non sensical, and horrible too, so I don’t know what I’m expecting of this scene to change that. -Sarah
How was the movie?
As mentioned in previous posts, I really like heist movies. They’re generally fun, exciting, and a good chance for actors to not take themselves super seriously. Further, the plot takes a familiar structure that can be modified to fit just about anything.
- Establish characters and the situation; specifically who they are and why they need to pull off the heist.
- Plan the heist. Explain all of the moving parts, and how everything is supposed to happen. This establishes the plan, and gives us insight into the characters.
- Pull off the heist. The plan falls apart. Have everything go wrong. This amps up the tension, and forces the characters to act in surprising ways.
- Resolve the heist. Maybe they get away with it. Maybe they don’t. Maybe the bad guys get screwed. Whatever.
Paul Schrader manages to hit all of these beats in Dog Eat Dog but, for some reason, insists on dwelling on unnecessary subplots and ridiculous character failings. All of this is done through a frequently psychedelic lens, which seems less “artful” and more “let’s make shit weird.”
David Lynch can get away with wild, psychedelic tangents.
Guy Ritchie can make wacky, self-destructive characters work.
Paul Schrader, apparently, can’t.
The acting in this film, it must be said, is excellent. Shot over a month in the Cincinnati area, the film looks cheap and dirty, as it should. The heist goes bad in the stupidest of ways, as it should.
Sadly, all of this is punctuated with nonsensical fever dreams.
Near the film’s ending, Nick takes an aging black couple hostage and steals their Cadillac. During the entire sequence, he affects a bad Humphrey Bogart impression for no discernable reason. Gospel music plays loudly in the background of these scenes. None of it matches the style or tone of the rest of the film.
It adds nothing. In fact, it detracts from the much cleaner ending given to “Diesel.”
At the film’s opening, we see Dafoe in a dream-like scene in which he sits, watching daytime TV in a pink wallpapered suburban house, doing drugs and being bothered by answering machine messages about a child’s cupcake-based homework. He then violently murders two people in a gory bloodbath for no apparent reason.
This is sort of hand waved away near the film’s end, but again, establishes nothing aside from the fact that Dafoe is a mad dog killer. I mean, the character is named “Mad Dog.” We get it.
The film is full of weird non-sequiturs like this, and they come together to dilute what could have been a tight, nihilist crime story about desperation, redemption, and the bonds of men into a rambly mess. -Michael
This movie was horrible. -Sarah
Yeah, but did you like it?
I really didn’t. It should have been right up my alley, but there was just too much “noise” for me to enjoy. -Michael
No, I hated this movie. -Sarah
Where can I watch it?
It’s free on something called “Philo”. I guess Tubi was full.
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