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"Those other boys don't know how to act," croons Justin Timberlake on Sexyback. But perhaps he should have thought twice about that line, because on the evidence of Alpha Dog, Timberlake is no De Niro either. Still, the trouser snake acquits himself without too much embarassment in Nick Cassavetes' messy dissection of gangsta culture. Based, somewhat controversially, on a true story. Alpha Dog follows a gang of small-time dope dealers whose attempt at a kidnapping goes disastrously wrong.

The leader of this little gang of wannabes is Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsch), a movie analogue for Jesse James Hollywood, one of the youngest man ever to make the FBI's ten most wanted list. Johnny and his pals Frankie (Timberlake), Bobby 911 (Alex Solowitz) and Elvis (Shawn Hatosy) live a life of extreme leisure, partying every night and sucking up bongs to the strains of aggressive hip hop. Cassavetes is at pains to point out the degeneracy of the gang, but as critiques go, it's not espcecially effective, since they all seem to be having a marvellous time.

"COMPLETE WITH VIRGINITY-BUSTING THREESOME"

Things go awry when Johnny decides on a whim to kidnap the kid brother of a fellow dealer who owes him money. The kid, played with wide-eyed brio by Anton Yelchin, treats his abduction as a holiday, complete with virginity-busting threesome in a swimming pool. Cassavetes uses a wide arsenal of flashy techniques; split screens, freeze frames labelling witnesses, even docudrama style interviews with distraught parents (Bruce Willis, in a moonscape make-up job, appears briefly as Truelove's dad). But his stylistic fourishes and some committed performances cannot disguise a certain emptiness where there should be tragedy.

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Alpha Dog is released in UK cinemas on Friday 20th April 2007.