The French are amazing filmmakers when the film unfolds in their homeland, but when it unfolds in the US, especially if it is a true crime story, the depiction seems less authentic and feels more like when tourists visit a church to study the parishioners for an anthropology class, not worship with them. An anthropologist may only notice the obvious larger than life things, not the subtleties and texture that make a viewer resonate with the person depicted on screen. It is not that the portrayal is not accurate, but it is self conscious of its limitations. It feels more like a tableaux than a movie—well done in brief moments of consumption, but dissonant for longer periods of time.
I saw the preview for White Boy Rick in the theater and knew that I would not pay money because I try not to give money to Matthew McConaughey after his remarks on Presidon’t. Embrace my money not in your pocket. He doesn’t need it anyway. I’m also not into movies involving drugs. Everyone has the favorite well-worn narratives that they like to revisit regardless of how predictable it is, and the live big, crash hard trajectory of drug trafficking bores me. Also the preview turned me off because it really seemed fascinated that black people would hang out with a white kid, which seems pretty ordinary, especially if you are white in Detroit, and without going to the IMDb page, I suspected that the director could not be African-American. After I saw the movie, I realized that the director was Algerian French. It was only because it was based on a true story that it ended up in my queue.
For me, the most riveting aspect of White Boy Rick is the fact that the federal government committed child abuse by giving drugs to the titular character and encouraging him to sell it; thus endangering and destroying his life. This aspect of the story is not heavily promoted, but it is the part with the strongest ensemble feel. It features Jennifer Jason Leigh as good cop, Brian Tyree Henry as bad cop and Rory Cochrane as wallpaper cop. These scenes were the best in the movie because the characters are never overshadowed by the glitz, noise and action of their surroundings. Their scenes are character studies, and the interaction between this child and these professionals are the best still moments in the movie.
Otherwise White Boy Rick is a chaos film in terms of drama, not action. The movie loves to show as many people talking simultaneously as possible, but it did not draw me into the story. The wall of noise kept me from getting attached to them. The first street scene is a symphony of various notes of white poverty despair: the crackhead granddaughter, the aging patriarch and matriarch who were blue collar workers, but too gritty for Gran Torino’s Clint Eastwood to hang out with, their no good mullet son doing his best impression of a responsible father and then the mostly silent adolescent grandson. There are other scenes that give the viewer a chance to savor the sensitivity and nuance in each actor’s work, but they are too often sacrificed in favor of the on screen struggle of who can chew the scenery the best and gain ascendency in any given exchange instead of simply having a conversation. The accumulated effect feels like mockery, not empathy or accuracy. That verbal parrying worked in the opening scene to show that Rick had a savvy beyond his years in making deals and not getting ripped off, but constantly trotting out that style of exchange means the audience is robbed of the opportunity to appreciate the valleys as well as the peaks.
White Boy Rick really missed an opportunity to emphasize how each generation is a little less than the prior one if it showed more interactions with the three generations of men. What a waste of Bruce Dern! Watch Chappaquiddick if you want to know what he can do in a few scenes with words, no lines. McConaughey as the father of the titular character does gently try to educate his son and constantly displays shock at his son’s ignorance, but um, dude, where have you been? When the movie started, did he just start noticing and caring that his kid knows nothing? The heart of the story is the father and son relationship then the sibling dynamic, but it never quite works because the tonal shifts have no rhythm and are inconsistent. Unfortunately this movie’s focal point is supposed to be Rick and his sudden rise in the crime world so the movie fails.
White Boy Rick really enjoys the scenes when the crowd swallows up Rick as if he was a character in a Dickens’ novel, but with none of the character development of the supporting characters. If your life depended on it, you would be hard pressed to remember any individual character’s name, which isn’t those actors’ fault because when one person gets a chance to give a speech on disparity in jail sentencing or shows protectiveness of a relative, he definitely has more to give than he was asked. It feels very superficial as if we were outsiders looking in instead of vicariously living through Rick and experiencing the favor of one of the more prominent drug dealers in his neighborhood. Instead I felt as if I was watching an old music video with montages of people partying and having a good time, which gets old.
White Boy Rick works best as a period piece by nailing the music, wardrobe and ambience, but it was not enough to carry the movie. I loved the 80s, but Rick’s 80s was not my version of the 80s so it didn’t get nostalgia points from me. Trigger warning: animals die brutally although because of the kind of animal that they were, you may not have a problem with their death. I did so while I theoretically cared when a certain character who participated in the mayhem got shot in the stomach and would never wish it on anyone, I also thought, “So you don’t like it when someone comes to your house and shoots you, huh. Interesting.” And don’t tell me boys will be boys. I thought worse of the animal killing than the drug dealing while condoning neither.
Unless you’re a huge fan of a member of the cast, particularly Bel Powley, or of the director, Yann Demange, (if I had realized that it was the same person that directed ’71, I would have skipped it), then I would not recommend this movie. I would also suggest it to people into drug crime dramas. I was never fully engaged or invested in the film. It felt like a waste of time. My mom thought that she wanted to see it and left clutching her pearls once the family started screaming in the street. We disliked it for very different reasons, but considering that we represent opposite ends of the viewing spectrum, it is a damning verdict. White Boy Rick is a coming of age movie in a dysfunctional society with no investment in character development.