Dog Eat Dog overflows with rage but also a sense of fun and experimentation

| Original Score: 7.5/10 | Jun 24, 2024

The majority of people will call this movie disjointed, amateurish and uneven… and honestly, it’s all that and more. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad film. The bold decisions make Dog Eat Dog one of the most impressive looking mainstream films out there.

| Dec 1, 2023

The whole movie is the textbook definition of 'trying too hard.'

| Original Score: 1/5 | Aug 10, 2021

Cage's character is matter of fact and just wants things to get done, gives the film a pace and a somewhat useful insight. But ultimately, the film has a mean streak too thick to appreciate more.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 4, 2020

The dog days aren't over, or so it would seem in director Paul Schrader's glorious return to hard-edged genre with Dog Eat Dog, which plays like a gritty throwback to crime dramas the esteemed writer/director was once celebrated for.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 3, 2019

It centres on three unpleasant characters whose repulsive actions are amoral and almost impossible to care about.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 19, 2018

Paul Schrader's Dog Eat Dog is a sort of '90s throwback, a post-Tarantino crime drama toplined by Nicolas Cage and Willem Dafoe.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 2, 2018

The lacking moral compass of Dog Eat Dog isn't a negative because the film is an ugly story of ugly people doing ugly things, and Schrader never implores the audience to root for these depraved dirtbags.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 1, 2018

Too intelligent to make this sort of dangerous conflation, Dog Eat Dog brilliantly manages to both delight in the darkly comic absurdity of the brutal murders and to criticise the circumstances that can drive some people to crime.

| Aug 28, 2018

It's fun, and Cage and Dafoe are worth watching, especially for Cage's impersonation of Humphrey Bogart.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 24, 2018

This is cinema that answers to nothing but itself.

| Nov 10, 2017

Avoid at all costs.

| Original Score: 0/5 | Oct 18, 2017

[Director Paul] Schrader peppers the film with stylistic touches that remind you of the dark, playful master he once was.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 27, 2017

A film full of social criticism that perhaps gets lost in an uncontrolled sea, with surprisingly calm interpretations, ends up being defined by some of the most ferocious dialogues of its protagonists. [Full review in Spanish]

| Feb 1, 2017

A film that generates a hallucinogenic capacity for the most absolute fascination from beginning to end, where Schrader's psychedelic tone turns out really surprising. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 1, 2017

This is a nihilistic film about nasty folks on a self-destructive path, a little too familiar by now but still more interesting than your usual crime-gone-bad films ...

| Jan 26, 2017

Dog Eat Dog is dark, unpleasant and violent.

| Original Score: 4/10 | Dec 12, 2016

As Dog Eats Dog clicks along, the plot takes a backseat, until it evaporates completely, leaving a series of unsatisfying scenes that collapse in a bizarre climax.

| Dec 5, 2016

It's sort of terrible. It's sort of terrific. It's never boring.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 1, 2016

This is an unholy mess, but the unhinged performances make it enough of an oddity to be worth a look. Just don't say you weren't warned...

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 18, 2016