Supposedly, after Paul Schrader’s last film (the terrorism saga “Dying of the Light,” starring Nicolas Cage) was taken away from him and re-assembled, he was going to leave moviemaking behind for web series. But hey, cinema, it seems your dark overlord of mottled masculinity couldn’t quit you, and so we have the quasi-colorful, if mildly stale and ultimately inconsequential, crime saga “Dog Eat Dog.”
The story’s veteran lowlifes — a trio of prison-hardened, homicidal thieves played by Cage, Willem Dafoe and Christopher Matthew Cook — could readily be taken as stand-ins for Schrader himself as he, like they, tries to squeeze a few more dirty thrills out of a disreputable profession.