Dog Eat Dog

2016 crime movie

Rating: 11/20

Plot: A trio of criminals team up for a job that will help them get their lives as ex-cons on track. It doesn't go well.

This movie is fucking crazy, and I loved nearly every minute of it! Please don't assume that means this is a good movie because it's definitely not that. Paul Schrader tells a largely incoherent story with far too many pieces flying around everywhere for this to work as a cohesive whole. You'll question most of the choices he makes as a director, laugh a little at his efforts to insert a little style into the storytelling, and wonder just what he's getting at. But at the same time, the ridiculous characters, the performances to create those ridiculous characters, and the unpredictability of the whole thing make this completely entertaining from its ultraviolet beginning to its pointlessly tragic denouement.

I think the following conversation between this pair of oddballs played by a pair of Hollywood oddballs might sum it all up best. In this scene, the trio are kidnapping a baby. The baby's crying, and Nic Cage's character wants to shut it up. He's starting to get stressed out, man! And this conversation ensues:

Cage's character: Can you shut this baby up? I know you know how. Where’s the thing you put in the fucking baby’s mouth? What’s it called?
Dafoe's character: Umm. Dick?
Cage's character: No.

It's a scene that I think is supposed to be packed with tension. Instead, Schrader and his actors seem to be playing it for laughs. And it's so funny! It works, especially when butted up against what happens next in that scene.

Dafoe is the unhinged character here, all jittery and coke-addled. Of course, Cage can't be out-unhinged by any actor, and his performance, which I believe is supposed to be more like a straight man to Dafoe's craziness, always seems to be threatening to reach peak-Cage levels. There's a brief sex scene, and you get to hear him say things like "dude" and "C-town," and by the end of the movie, his character is doing Bogart impressions. I'm not joking there. Cage or Schrader or some twisted combination of the two visionaries have decided that Cage's character needs to morph into Humphrey Bogart for the last 15 minutes of the movie. It's really something else. At one point, I convinced myself that he was imitating a rabbit instead of Bogart, but I'm pretty sure I was wrong. There's also a great scene where Cage and Dafoe are doing cocaine and talking gibberish, and another where a shirtless Cage is having a mustard-and-ketchup fight with Dafoe and the other guy who isn't even important enough to get his visage or name on the poster. But the best Cage moment is when he's talking on a phone and almost gets hit by a car. He has this Cagian mini-freakout that is just completely awesome.

This is a lot wilder and more entertaining than the other Schrader/Cage collaboration, Dying of the Light. I'd recommend it to Dafoe or Cage fans, but you'll think you're going nuts while watching the movie. Be warned.