I went into "Dog Eat Dog" expecting a completely different film from what I got. I'd read the gritty crime novel this film was based on, written by Edward Bunker, a real-life career criminal turned author and script doctor, and was expecting a grim unsettling movie along the line's of director Paul Schrader's "Hardcore." The novel was a realistic story of street level criminals who'd rather get killed than go back to prison. Troy, a con recently released from prison, hooks up with his old gang, Mad Dog and Diesel, and sets out on a crime spree that culminates in a botched kidnapping. The film adaptation has the same basic plot with Nicolas Cage as Troy and the great Willem Dafoe as the unpredictable and unhinged Mad Dog, as well as Christopher Matthew Cook as Diesel. However, the film makes a number of changes, including changing the setting from Los Angels to Cleveland (not a biggie), but it's the film's wildly inconsistent tone that makes it something of a mess. At times a social commentary, while at others is an ultraviolet satire ALA "Natural Born Killers," and still at other times dips into the surreal and bizarre. "Dog Eat Dog" is a complete mess, but it's a brilliant mess. Director Paul Schrader ("Taxi Driver" as writer, "Cat People" "American Gigolo," "Auto Focus") is a true master of cinema and always makes interesting films. With "Dog Eat Dog," Schrader found financing outside of Hollywood and was given complete creative freedom. He utilized that freedom to create some absolutely brilliant moments (the screen melting during one of Dafoe's drug trips, a grotesque body disposal scene, or the film's pink hued ultra-violent opening), but the film as a whole felt very disconnected and was essentially a series of crime genre vignettes. Still, genre vignettes by a master filmmaker like Schrader is going to be interesting and never boring. Overall, "Dog Eat Dog" did not strike me as heady or as intellectual as Schrader's best films, but more seemed to be an exercise in pure "cinema."

When I bought this I was really looking forward to the combination of an Eddie Bunker (No Beast So Fierce/Straight Time, Animal Factory, Runaway Train) story directed by Paul Schrader and featuring Willem Defoe in what seemed a great combination. Unfortunately it's a substandard crime flick with meandering plot, over the top and outdated editing (Think Tony Scott a decade ago, only badly done) and a bizarre ending. I paid £1.00 GBP for a used Bluray and feel short changed. Only completists and Die Hards need view this poor offering.

This is legitimately one of the worst movies I've ever seen. There was no plot structure, nothing made sense, and one of the main characters Mad Dog is killed by his "friend" / work associate Diesel because Mad Dog rambles too long. I found myself saying verbally saying, "Shut Up" at my screen because of how annoying his conjecture was. It was as if the writers finally managed to squeeze in a good piece of dialogue, and then BAM, all that payoff was instantly destroyed as they have one of the thugs kill the other one. It was pointless. The writing is so bad, I spent the time updating my account just to write this out.

A trio of recently released ex-cons take on a few high-risk high- reward criminal jobs in order to get a quick cash grab. Will it pay off?There is no plot to this movie, plain and simple. Schrader and the editor seemed to place that on the backburner in order to focus primarily on doing odd camera effects and homages to cinematography styles of film past. There are so many unnecessary scenes and palaver that I really started to nod off a bit. And then, typically in a fashion that is apropros of nothing, a character will go off on a social commentary tangent on the current faults of society. These conversations never felt organic and always completely missed the mark.The last 30 minutes of this movie felt like a series of randomly assorted scenes that someone tossed in together. And that Cage voice over at the end, what was the point? What is this justice you are talking about? I haven't heard anything about this the entire movie and now it's apparently about seeking justice in the world? You attempted to kidnap a baby early that day and killed that baby's mother for absolutely no reason other than the fact that she was upset over the fact that you kidnapped her kid, as would be expected from her!There were a few shots throughout this movie where I thought, "Oh that looks nice" but overall this felt like a major waste of time. There's no plot, bad acting, too much hamminess to be taken seriously but not enough hamminess to be a fun time. I want to criticize the ending but it was really the only way they could go with it at that point. The nihilistic ending ties in nicely with my thoughts on this movie: these men have no purpose... just like this movie.