Dog Eat Dog: Do I Look Like Bogart?
Ok. It’s me. I’m back in the Cage. I know I’ve been away for a while, but this project has been alternatively muttering and screaming in the back of my brain, so I’ve come back to it. I wrote down a Cage List, I sat in front of the TV, and I put on a movie and watched Nicolas Cage say words and move his body. And I felt purpose return to me. I felt meaning crawl into my heart and pump, beat by beat, through my veins. I felt my hair grow thin, my eyes grow tired, and my thoughts grow strange.
I have walked back into this prison known as Cage, and I have found home.
Dog Eat Dog is a crime-thriller directed by Paul Schrader, best known for writing Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Bringing Out the Dead (also with Cage) for the legendary Martin Scorsese. Dog Eat Dog seems to ape some of these movies at times, and there are glimpses of brilliance, but overall, it’s a flat fetishization of random violence more akin to Boondock Saints than Reservoir Dogs.
Willem Dafoe plays Mad Dog, a drug addicted loose cannon career criminal who kills his girlfriend and her kid in a rage. Nicolas Cage plays Troy, a criminal who sees himself as a modern Humphrey Bogart, peppering his speech with “Nyah,” and “See?” Rounding out the trio is unknown actor Christoper Matthew Cook as the self-pitying muscle of the gang, Diesel. Cook is consistently completely outclassed by the veteran actors Cage and Dafoe, making himself look bad in comparison and slowing down the movie with every awkward take he’s in.
What this movie was going for is sort of unclear, and it never really sticks a message or a theme. The visuals begin as striking in their stark contrasts of bismuth pink and strip club blue before jerking into a sleek black and white that looks very Sin City, but almost immediately after that, this use of colour is completely abandoned for a very plain looking grim and gloomy palette. That’s not to say there aren’t good looking moments or clever shots throughout the film, but by and large it seems extremely by-the-numbers, which is disappointing coming from a veteran like Schrader.
The script is… horrible. The plot would be boring if it wasn’t so incoherent. It feels like all three acts were written independently from each other, and the main storyline is completely dropped by the third act and is never resolved. Furthering this sense of alienation and frustration is the horrible dialogue that can’t be saved by quality performances from Dafoe or Cage, and that is made painfully apparent by the struggling Cook. Dafoe’s character is constantly dropping uncomfortable racial epithets when he’s not blathering on about himself, Cage’s character goes from cool and detached to giddiliy ranting about what meal is best at a restaurant, and Cook’s character spells out his whole schtick in a single expository scene that makes you wonder why he’s there at all. It’s clearly an attempt at recreating Pulp Fiction’s conversational style, but none of the content is relatable enough, nor is the dialogue driving enough to make these conversations enjoyable in their aimlessness.
So let’s hop into the Cage List.
Shirtlessness: Nicolas Cage has a shirtless mustard fight with Willem Dafoe. Beautiful. Probably the best scene in the movie.
Shaving: Nope.
Cage Scream: Whenever Nicolas Cage is told to act drunk, he usually just laughs really aggressively and then does a scream or two. I wonder if Nicolas Cage has ever been drunk.
Over-acting: Cage does this horrible Humphrey Bogart impression towards the end of the movie and it’s just phenomenal.
Under-acting: It feels like there’s a lot of improvised dialogue from Cage in this movie because he casually rambles a lot about food menus and going to France.
Weird Dialogue: There’s a point at the beginning of the film where Cage references being Facebook friends before Facebook was a thing. I rewatched it twice, and I’m still not sure what that means.
Describing Violence: At one point he threatens to shoot a guy’s backbone out of his belly. I’m sure there’s more, but that was the weirdest one in the movie.
Running: He runs in a flashback before his character gets shot in the leg, which is I guess the reason he didn’t do any other running in the movie.
Kissing: Yep! Makes out with a stripper, and it is super gross.
This would be a fantastic Cage movie if it weren’t so horribly bogged down by other characters. The ‘Diesel’ character feels needless and boring, and Cook plays him like a thumb with limbs. Every moment that Cage is on screen feels delightfully weird, strangely acted, and downright sleazy. I can absolutely understand why he signed on to this movie — it paints itself as an homage to classic crime films and the dialogue gives him a chance to show off his cinematic knowledge — but I have a feeling that the final product was not what he envisioned going in.
There is a point where the stripper he’s making out with says “You’re actually pretty fuckin’ hot,” and I laughed so hard I spit my tea out.
May you always die like a samurai,
Nat
