As far as I'm concerned, there are three kinds of bad movies. Some are so terrible that they're unintentionally hilarious and some are just clearly lacking in any redeeming qualities. Then there's this curious third kind, the rarest variety of film there is. These are bad movies that have loads of wasted potential, movies that could have been good if only a few things had been done differently. If any movie fits this description, it's Alpha Dog, the 2006 true crime drama written and directed by Nick Cassavetes. It is such a bizarre jumble of baffling motivations that despite being aimless and at some points nigh-unwatchable, I found myself compelled one summer to watch it several times over.

Alpha Dog is based off the events leading to the August 2000 murder of Nicholas Markowitz, a 15-year-old California kid whose older brother Benjamin ran afoul of a local gang of drug dealers. It's not entirely clear what caught Cassavetes's attention about this story, but what is known is that he got his hands on some sensitive case files for the then-ongoing investigation from Santa Barbara DA Ronald Zonen. Legally questionable as that is, the result was a (supposedly) accurate dramatization of the ordeal.

So, the problem with Alpha Dog isn't that it messes with reality. The real issue is in its strange pacing, weird cast and ham-fisted direction. In what is probably the film's most severe miscalculation, Cassavetes accepted Justin Timberlake as one of his main supporting players. Timberlake, like so many pop singers looking for acting careers, just doesn't have the dramatic chops to carry a role of that caliber.

The rest of Alpha Dog's cast fares a little better. Anton Yelchin plays soon-to-be victim Zack Mazursky with as much wide-eyed wonder and teenage obliviousness as the role requires and Ben Foster lends some much-needed respectability to Cassavetes's ridiculously over-the-top meth head Jake. A devious part of me wants Sharon Stone's worried mother to be somehow more off-the-hook than she already is, but given the dark subject matter of the movie it just wouldn't fit. Most tragically, Bruce Willis is under-used, showing up pretty much at the beginning and end of the movie and doing little else.

The remaining players in Alpha Dog just aren't very memorable. They fade into their stereotypes, proving that Cassavetes just isn't that hip to modern culture or capable of giving more depth to his functional thugs. What he does do well as a director is capture the pointless opulence his characters inhabit. One scene in particular stands out in this regard. Late in the film when Natasha tries to go to her mother for help, she finds her high out of her mind and more interested in sex with an ex than in her clearly troubled daughter. If Alpha Dog had more quiet but descriptive moments like that, it would be the poignant cautionary tale it desperately wants to be.

Ultimately, what ruins Alpha Dog is its inability to choose a target audience. It simultaneously grabs for an older, more conservative crowd and the teens who would go to the theater for Timberlake and the film's gangsta rap soundtrack. Given a smaller, less gimmicky cast and a more clear-headed understanding of the implications of the real Markowitz murder, Alpha Dog could have been an excellent slice of social commentary. As it stands, it's a textbook example of what happens when you give a hack who adapted The Notebook the case files for a tragic but compelling story.