Paul Schrader seems so intent on ignoring overused genre-movie conventions that he ignores what would have made this pulp crimer effective.
They say prostitution is the world’s oldest profession, but that’s only because crime doesn’t pay, or else robbers, murderers and thieves would surely come first. Their exploits have been the stuff of cinema since the medium’s earliest days, to the extent that the crime genre has become all but calcified — which surely explains why director Paul Schrader goes so far out of his way to break all the rules with “Dog Eat Dog.” Coming off the indignity of having “Dying of the Light” taken away from him, the “Taxi Driver” screenwriter-turned-director seems determined to try out some new tricks. He means for the result to feel fresh and electric, but instead, his anarchic approach (one could even call it “criminal,” considering how it deliberately disobeys genre laws) frequently verges on incompetent, as most of the time, rejecting the obvious choice leads to choosing a worse one.
Had the experiment worked, “Dog Eat Dog” might have been the next “Natural Born Killers” — a cracked-out postmodern romp whose delinquent antiheroes see themselves as the stars of the ultimate bandits-on-the-run movie. Adapted from a novel from a real-life criminal, Edward Bunker, the film begins with a guy named Mad Dog (Willem Dafoe) watching television and ends with ex-con pal Tony (Nicolas Cage) playing Humphrey Bogart in his own hail-of-gunfire “Bonnie and Clyde”-style ending. In between, they enlist another friend they met in the slammer, Diesel (Christopher Matthew Cook), to assist with what should be a relatively straightforward kidnapping.
They’re supposed to steal a baby from a guy named Brennan who’s been holding out millions from a local Cleveland crime boss. But Mad Dog has an itchy trigger finger (“Let me waste a couple,” he begs during an earlier hold-up), and some goon’s brains end up splattered all over the baby’s nursery. The movie never even bothers to reveal what becomes of the baby, which may or may not be screenwriter Matthew Wilder’s fault, since Schrader seemed to approach it as little more than the framework on which the cast and crew (nearly all of them hungry young talents a bit too eager to prove themselves) might improvise.
Following the film’s closing-night premiere in Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival, Schrader explained his strategy: “Don’t be boring.” But that doesn’t really qualify as a valid piece of direction. In fact, it’s practically the opposite, allowing a certain kind of creative anarchy to hijack the proceedings — which otherwise feel like a quarter-century-late Scorsese or Tarantino rip-off. Consider the vaguely pop-culture conversation set in the front of Moon Man’s sedan, in which the drug dealer gripes about how his lazy girlfriend has let her Beyoncé curves go, essentially time before the trio (hilariously disguised as Cleveland’s least convincing cops in one of the film’s better gags) pull him over. He may as well be debating the implications of a foot massage, a la “Pulp Fiction,” only the dialogue isn’t nearly as interesting, and even with the police car visible through the rear window, the suspense is practically non-existent.
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