★★☆☆☆
A crassly nihilistic crime movie that is brought to you by the veteran director Paul Schrader (American Gigolo) and the often dazzling lead actors Nicolas Cage and Willem Dafoe, Dog Eat Dog is a waste of their talents. Cage stars as Troy, an ex-con and gang leader who is planning, urgh, that “one last job” to set him up for life. In this case it will involve kidnapping a local mobster’s child with the aid of Dafoe’s homicidal maniac, helpfully named Mad Dog. Naturally, it goes wrong from the start — bullets are fired, heads are blown to pieces, throats are slit.
The problem throughout the entire 91 minutes is one of tone. Schrader, apparently aiming for hipster overkill, makes a (deliberate?)