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

A crassly nihilistic crime movie that is brought to you by the veteran director Paul Schrader and the often dazzling lead actors Nicolas Cage and Willem Dafoe, Dog Eat Dog is a waste of their talents.

Schrader won't win any awards for Dog Eat Dog but it certainly qualifies as a guilty pleasure. Dafoe and Cage enjoy themselves hugely as the low-grade, "nickel-and-dime" career criminals dreaming of the payday that will never come.

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