Defensive masculinity

"Alpha Dog lives up to its title as one of modern American cinema’s most powerful evocations of the tortured, defensive masculinity of the lower-class young male. Every character (including the victim) is desperate to prove his manhood – or at least that they’re not the “bitch” or “faggot” of the bunch. However, the same tough dudes who beat each other senseless with Fight Club-level brutality reduce themselves to diva-worthy temper tantrums and crying jags whenever the consequences of their impulse-control-challenged behavior sinks in.
Timberlake is top-notch – it’s hard to imagine any but the absolute cream of Gen-Y actors (Bale, DiCaprio, Gyllenhaal) playing his part any better. His final major scene with young Zack in the rocky caves of Joshua Tree is emotionally devastating in every sense of the word. The film’s gangsta soundtrack and original score (with several contributions from the rock/rap group Lowd) is very effectively applied, with the mordantly in-joke choice of “Goodbye to Hollywood” as the closing song. Nick Cassavetes’ writing and direction is appropriately discomfiting, with his technique kicking up several notches as the storyline progresses, in what is obviously a labor of love. And for a movie about such grim subject matter, Alpha Dog actually manages to have a (dark) sense of humor without indulging in simpering, cutesy irony or making inappropriate light of what ultimately happened". Source: www.filmstew.com

In the movie Jarhead, Jake Gyllenhaal plays a young US marine who has followed the path of his father to the military duties.
In the article “Modernism and Masculinity” by Gerald Izenburg:
“It gave him (men) a means of resolving the persistent inner tension by turning the battle outward against an external enemy, and identifying wholly with soldiers--literal, rather than literary, warriors. Turning the battle outward, he (men) could also split off and project his internally threatening femininity outward onto the enemy…”

The word “alpha” describes an individual to be the dominant or top ranked and also shows the dominant aspect of a marine’s wife. The Marine Corps jargon “alpha unit” is used to describe the spouse of a Marine. Another term that is also used would be Delta Whiskey, which stands for "dependant" wife.