Film Review – Dog Eat Dog

When thinking about Paul Schrader, his work as a screenwriter on “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull,” and his direction of “American Gigolo” come to mind. But those projects were decades ago. The Schrader of the last 20 years has been decidedly more problematic, struggling to find his place in an independent film system that no longer welcomes his bitter point of view. He hit a career low point with 2013’s “The Canyons” (a wretched creation), and stumbled again with 2014’s “Dying of the Light,” a picture allegedly reworked without his permission (he did keep his name on the broken endeavor). Perhaps in an effort to cleanse himself of frustration, Schrader serves up “Dog Eat Dog,” a nihilistic, anarchic comedy that welcomes surreal imagery and the loosest definition of plot. It’s Schrader trying to raise hell with stars Nicolas Cage and Willem Dafoe, and while the feature achieves craziness, it doesn’t translate to anything particularly memorable. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com