Dog Eat Dog – first look review

Hey kids, who remem­bers the ​’90s? They were so cool! Indie movies, florid dia­logue, loud colours, tilty angles, post­mod­ern takes on clas­sic movies… Dog Eat Dog, adapt­ed from the late screen actor Edward Bunker’s 1996 nov­el, sees direc­tor Paul Schrad­er mak­ing flip­pant lark which looks back to that hal­lowed era, but also mocks it bru­tal­ly and relent­less­ly. It doesn’t just mock it, it shoots holes in the floor and makes it dance a jig for sick kicks.

The first irony here is that the sto­ry takes place in the unlove­ly-look­ing city of Cleve­land (referred to hope­ful­ly as ​“The Big C”), whose land­scape com­pris­es sole­ly of strip malls and strip clubs. It sees a trio of two-time losers on a road to obliv­ion, adamant to get rich or die try­ing. Troy (Nico­las Cage) is the brains, a man of style and refined taste, but still quick to vio­lence. Then there’s Diesel (Christo­pher Matthew Cook), a gen­tle giant who is also quick to vio­lence. And final­ly there’s Mad Dog (Willem Dafoe) who has no oth­er traits bar the fact that he is quick to violence.

Schrad­er posts these hap­less recidi­vists on a jour­ney – quite lit­er­al­ly, as he plays Troy’s wiseguy under­world con­tact – in the hope that they’ll make enough cash to jet off to Hawaii so we’ll nev­er see them again. But things start to go wrong before any­thing has even hap­pened. Their fate is sealed from an ear­ly scene in which they tool around in a dance club, cel­e­brat­ing their recent free­dom from prison. These are low-rent guys, chancers with zero idea of the obsta­cles that stand in the way of their dreams.

The film is at its best when the focus drifts away from the plot towards the banal details of their tin­pot crim­i­nal endeav­ours. A scene where Cage is strid­ing through a car park while speak­ing on a phone leads to com­e­dy gold when he walks in front of a mov­ing car and almost (but not quite) goes nut­so berserk. He waves them on in a ​‘you got lucky this time, punks’ man­ner, hilar­i­ous­ly thumb­ing from behind his back. It’s become some­thing of a cliché to cheer­lead for stock Cage wack­i­ness, but he proves time and time again that he has a rare screen mag­net­ism. For bet­ter or worse, it’s impos­si­ble to take your eyes off him, and Schrad­er extracts the best from him.

As with his vast­ly under­rat­ed porn indus­try satire, The Canyons, this new film pos­sess­es a noth­ing-to-loose ener­gy that pow­ers it inel­e­gant­ly past the fin­ish line and beyond. It feels like the kind of film that Robert Rodriguez has been try­ing and fail­ing to make for the past 20 years, with its ultra salty ban­ter, per­pet­u­al wise­crack­ing, casu­al vio­lence and a dark soul that glim­mers with nos­tal­gic rev­er­ence. And while that might sound like damn­ing the film with faint praise, a less mealy-mouthed assess­ment would be that Dog Eat Dog achieves every­thing it sets out to do, and it sets out to offer a no-ques­tions-asked cheap shot of dirty fun.