Starring Nicolas Cage, Willem Dafoe, and Christopher Matthew Cook, Dog Eat Dog is the story of three small-time criminals trying to get one last, big score giving them enough money to go straight. But, Dog Eat Dog doesn't even bother to get to this final job, the kidnapping of a baby, until halfway through the movie.
Prior to this kidnapping, the film is about Cage's character, Troy, telling the audience about being in jail, getting out of jail, and just how important his friends, Mad Dog (Dafoe) and Diesel (Cook), are to him. Well, it's about that except for when it's about Mad Dog's irrational anger and drug habit… or when it's about telling the audience how smart Diesel is before showing him to be stupid… or when it's about offering up a view into just how grossly incompetent all three men are at their chosen, illegal, profession.
Some of the above is played for laughs. Some of it is meant to be serious. Some is meant to be brutal (there are a few exceptionally violent moments). Schrader's film is constantly switching tones, but these changes never feel as though they exist so as to enhance any overall aspect of the film. They instead seem to be present to enhance any given scene in the film, as though the scenes exist in isolation, to be watched at most a handful at a time, rather than one after the next in succession so as to form a full movie.
The result is a sense of unease on the part of the audience, unease which is enhanced by Troy's status as an unreliable narrator. It is Troy who tells us about his friends, and tells his friends about the job, but the audience constantly gets a different sense from the one Troy offers. Additionally, through his own actions, we know Troy be an annoying clown, someone more obsessed with whether or not he looks like Humphrey Bogart than with making sure to stay alive and out of jail.
There is an argument to be made that Troy is less unreliable than he is unintelligent, that Troy views Diesel as smart not because Diesel is smart, but because Diesel is so much smarter than Troy. There is evidence to back up such an assertion as well, particularly with Troy's inability to plan out the kidnapping crime that is set to make them rich.
But, if Troy is so obviously incompetent, how does he get hired for these jobs? Ah, well, the man doing the hiring is a guy named El Greco, who is played by Paul Schrader, the same Paul Schrader who is directing the movie. Troy gets hired for the job because if Troy doesn't get hired there is no movie.
Although there are definitely issues in both the plot and tone of Dog Eat Dog, all of those complaints do not negate the fact that there are some interesting stylistic choices and that the film has the occasional ability to shock in its depiction of violence. There are moments in Dog Eat Dog that will cause the audience to wonder whether they are in fact watching an incredible, powerful, new type of crime movie. All too soon, however, the scene will end and the viewer will again realize that while there are fascinating bits, they are few and far between.
One cannot even suggest that the audience will be truly impressed by the performances. Dafoe's Mad Dog is the most engaging for the character's being the most insane of the triumvirate, but none of the main characters really develop/change/grow over the course of the hour and a half that the movie plays out. Not only that, but Dog Eat Dog only offers the occasional glimpse into who the characters truly are on in the inside.
By the time the final scene—which includes yet another shift in feel—rolls around, very few people watching will have any remaining desire to figure out what, if anything, it all means.
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