I do not like Dog Eat Dog and would not recommend it, but for people who think that Joker is a rigorous character study of a delusional DC Comics villain, I would laugh in your face then present the disgusting trio at the forefront of Paul Schrader’s film. For this viewer, the main problem of Joker and Dog Eat Dog is questioning whether or not the filmmaker buys and cosigns its dissolute characters. To a certain degree, all creatives love what they create, but do they relate to them and want the audience to love them as much as they do or hope that the audience approaches the character with a critical eye that can distinguish between loving the character, but not necessarily equating that love with approval of the character’s behavior.
My problem with Joker is that it is really a revenge film because the filmmaker manipulates the viewer into buying into the idea that Fleck’s acts were an extreme, but understandable, response to injuries while omitting depicting the implicit murders of (three?) black characters on screen because then Fleck would be seen as a murderer of innocents. Especially as a black viewer who has to deliberately consciously uncouple from respectability politics in my cultural and political assumptions because that is the main way that I am seen as a human being, by my extraordinariness, I am fascinated how easy it is for others to glorify and embrace the criminal, especially if that criminal is not particularly smart, affable and/or attractive. Dog Eat Dog feels like Schrader decided to deliberately give that glorious treatment to a trio that fit that class of criminal then up the ante by making them do some unforgiveable acts, and I frankly did not like it because I bridled at the idea that these men even deserved to be the stars of their own movies. A part of me wants the filmmaker to explicitly disavow his creation, not just hope that I will see that just because he loves them, it does not mean that their actions are not horrifying. I think that his love was excessive and undeserved because he chooses to depict their delusions as truth for the viewer to empathize with, not simply just observe.
Dog Eat Dog is about three men who form a team that gets criminal assignments from The Greek, played wonderfully by the director, and agree that they never want to get locked up again so when they get one big job so they could leave this life behind and things start to go wrong, the main question becomes how earnest were they about not going back to jail. Nicholas Cage plays Troy, the team’s mastermind. Willem Dafoe plays the aptly named Mad Dog. Christopher Matthew Cook, who holds his own among these over the top screen legends, plays Diesel, who probably could pass as normal if you only spent brief spurts with him and did not talk too long. We have been groomed by movies that feature criminals going about their business as Tarantino-esque or Ocean’s Eleven heists where we marvel at the smoothness and skill without any consequences. These criminals still get a glossy treatment, but it contrasts with reality.
Dog Eat Dog has numerous distinct looks throughout the film. It begins with a hyper feminine, pink, hallucinogenic, disorienting scene that introduces Mad Dog. Then the present is shot in black and white as Troy narrates what has happened to him and how this group formed, but the flashbacks are in color. The majority of the film’s center is shot in a way that is not distinct or memorable. It is what you normally expect to see in a film or a television show. The last two sequences are striking. It suddenly gets the action film, almost Matrix, treatment then it ends with an oneiric, colorful, almost fantasy sequence at the end, which side note, Baby Driver may have imitated. I kept waiting for the film to stabilize into a singular, cohesive rhythm and style, but it never does. The closest that we get a rhythm is when the trio briefly splits up to celebrate, and we see how the world sees them, and when Troy meets with the Greek. Schrader directed First Reformed, Affliction, The Comfort of Strangers, Cat People and American Gigolo so if he wanted to make an easily digestible film, he would, but he chose to show us how these men see themselves and their immediate environment, which is why, when they are together and interacting, there is no distinct visual style because their delusions cannot singularly dominate them. Their delusions are colored by their consumption of popular culture—movies, television, etc. An explicit source of rage and disorientation for them is their disconnect from the rest of the world because while incarcerated, they can’t consume popular culture in real time so they do not share the same common language as others. They feel as if they can never escape their sentence because their time delay sets them apart.
Schrader does have a sense of humor when he punctures their individual realities. His most caustic sequence is when Mad Dog asks Diesel for grace and expresses a willingness to improve his behavior in the most unlikely settings that underscore how oblivious he is to any potential instruction, requested or not. Schrader definitely is aware that his trio are horrible. During the first heist, they display behavior that I hate in depicted criminals-indignant when someone fights back or does not just roll over. The first heist sequence coupled with the final Troy fantasy sequence disturbs me because I do not know if audiences will take away the absurdity of his view of the world and instead agree with his victim mentality.
In Dog Eat Dog, Troy goes from dressing himself and his crew in power drag to escape any consequences of his wrongdoing and to act with impunity, which is particularly believable considering that the film is set in Ohio, an open carry state unless you are a black child, Tamir Rice. He consciously exploits and aligns himself with the existing power structure to further exploit the exploited then feels aggrieved and equates himself to unarmed black people when he actually faces consequences for literal criminal acts that he engaged in throughout the entire film. The film expresses, by showing his view of the world and never reverting back to an ordinary view, sympathy for him by borrowing the pain of black people as if he was not instrumental and complicit as the ongoing source of that pain. If the film had briefly shown Troy in the alley at the end, I could have let it go, especially considering the sardonic racial unity tone struck by who is delivering his just desserts, but it bothers me.
Instead Dog Eat Dog feels critical of the criminal justice system for the wrong reasons. I will concede that this trio are victims in the sense that they should have been stopped and rehabilitated a long time ago before they were allowed to get rancid and team up. There should have been a better community for them to join than the one that they formed for themselves, but even for criminals, they are pretty awful, and it was no Just Mercy. I was glad when it ended.