#93 – Dog Eat Dog

Movie Criminals, 

Last week we watched “Dog Eat Dog” a 2016 movie starring Nicolas Cage. It was the second half of a much delayed Cage Double Feature. Like most things in life it was not as good as ‘Vampires Kiss’. 

Here are some cherry picked review quotes I gathered from the web, 

• “Fooled by a cool trailer yet again”
• “a pointless and confusing Tarantino wanna-be of a film.”
• “a sort of low-rent crime caper starring Nicolas Cage and Willem Dafoe”
• “performances marked by a comically self-absorbed fury”

SO… what happened in this movie. 

Recap!

William Defoe plays Mad Dog, the crazy one. We meet in the the comically pink house of his ex girlfriend. He’s getting all hopped up on goofballs and she tries to kick him out for watching porn on her computer, so he does the only logical thing… kills her and her daughter.

Smash Cut! DOG EAT DOG, title sequence. 

Mad dog is now meeting up with his old bud Nicolas Cage and his new friend Generic Criminal man. They have some kind of big score to get. Which involves pretending to be police and robbing some local gangsters. This part of the movie is actually kind of fun, with them making a fake police car and robbing drug dealers. But at this point you’re still trying to forget about the brutal murder of a mother and daughter… so anyway.

They get away with what we all heard was $9000 and they react like they’ve hit the jackpot for life. From this point on everyone has better clothes and cars. They have a weird party in a hotel room that devolves into a ketchup and mustard squirting party. I think… with this movie… you look away and never really know what happens. 

So after some partying with hookers in hotels they decided that things are going pretty well, but they need one last score. They get a job from another mobster. He wants them to kidnap the grandson of another gangster for ransom. These bungling assholes end up killing the gangster in the process. Shotgun to the face style.

This typically spirals out of control for them. In one very gross scene Mad dog and generic other criminal go to hide the body in the upper floor of an abandoned building. They end up falling through the floor with 3 dead bodies and lots of gross slime. I feel this is the point that generic criminal has had enough and kills Mad Dog for getting shit on his tracksuit.

A couple hours later he is back with Nic Cage and they are shopping for some lunch meats at the super market. The store manager notifies the police that there is a Generic Criminal type covered in brain matter buying ham by the pound. But they cop says “looks normal to me”! The cops partner is trying to talk to Cage, but he sees no way out and starts beating her. There’s a momentary standoff and generic criminal guy shoots the female cop, who like everyone instantly pointed out IS NOT WEARING A VEST. 

What the hell Bill?

Mark

There’s a car chase for a second and we are finally blessed with the end for the Generic guy. Nic cage has a foot chase that lasts for about 100 feet before he is caught by the cops. Despite the public nature of all this, the cops decide that they can just take Nic Cage out to the country and drag him in handcuffs behind the car. Then literally in the next scene he has escaped and into a black and white diner sequence where his is suddenly talking with a Humphrey Bogart accent (and not in a hilarious way) he gets out of there and takes an old black couple hostage. Everything is tinted red and purple. Is this a dream sequence? Is he already dead? is this just shitty editing! Probably. In a final act of contempt for the viewer, the film kills the old couple in a hail of gunfire. Was it a dream? At this point no one cared and it didn’t mean anything. 

I didn’t do a great job with the screenshots, but it’s probably for the best. 

This is the prefect movie for a weird trailer, if you pick out just the weird scenes (mustard fight, some black and white sequences, the slow-mo punching, the shotgun blasts, the bad police car, the random ‘inside the heart’ effect) I think you could be fooled into thinking this was a fun movie. But it just never comes together and just comes off as confusing or dumb. 

Here’s an article about actually eating dogs, which I think might be better than this movie. 

See you this Thursday for another Thrilling Movie Night!
-Mark