WHITE BOY RICK tells the true story of Richard Wershe Jr., a teen in 1980s Detroit also known as White Boy Rick,recruited by the FBI as the youngest informant ever at 15-years-old. The trailer makes this film look like some wild adventure in the vein of BLOW but WHITE BOY RICK is a sad and frightening tale, as well as a portrait of economic decline of a working class inner city neighborhood, now gripped by drugs and violence. It is also a story about a boy buffeted by the bad choices of adults, and the terrible environment in which he lives.
When we first meet Rick Wershe Jr. (Richie Merritt), he is hardly the hardened street thug we might imagine. The 14-year-old and his dad Rick Sr. (Matthew McConaughey) are at a gun show, where dad, a licensed gun dealer, is driving a hard bargain with a little wheeler-dealer flare with one of the vendors. Celebrating his successful deal, dad tells his son they will pick up Rick’s older sister and go out for ice cream.
That happy family image is shattered as soon as they arrive home at their dilapidated house. The drug-using sister, Dawn (Bel Powley), is on the couch with the neighborhood low-life dad forbade her to see, and after a confrontation in which Dawn peppers the air with F-bombs, she takes off with her boyfriend in his car. Grandpa Ray (Bruce Dern) and grandma Verna (Piper Laurie), who live across the street, arrive home to see this scene.
The scene is sort of darkly comic but underlying truth about this family is shockingly grim. Despite his shady business selling guns on the street, Rick senior wants to be a good parent, but is struggling to raise his two kids since his wife left years earlier. He has an unreasoning optimism that prevents him from really grasping their situation. When his son asks why they don’t move away from decaying Detroit, dad expresses a strange kind of civic pride, calling Detroit their city. He equates the city with the Serengeti and he and his son as lions ruling over it. Lions don’t leave the Serengeti, he says.
Actually, his son is more like a gazelle in this Serengeti, and Dad’s unrealistic sunny view puts him at greater risk. Unlike his older sister, Rick is uninterested in drugs and basically a good kid who is close to his dad.
One unspoken reason dad might have for not wanting to leave the neighborhood where he grew up is his aging parents across the street. The three generations of the Wershe family illustrate the decline of the working class in their Detroit neighborhood. The grandparents’ house is neat and well-maintained, and they live orderly lives. One can imagine he is a retired autoworker, although it is never said, and he is puzzled by what has happened to his family and city. Rick Sr. is always hustling and looking for ways to make money, a fast-talker who speaks like he had some education. But when he tells his son something is a metaphor, he has to define the term for him.
However, Rick Jr. has street-smarts and a more realistic view of what Detroit has become than his naive father. Rick’s his best friend is Boo Curry (RJ Cyler, ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL), and Rick earns his nickname from a pair of older relatives of Boo’s, local drug dealing brothers Johnny “Lil Man” Curry (Jonathan Majors) and Leo “Big Man” Curry (Rapper YG), basically because he is the only white kid around. Johnny is engaged to Cathy (Taylour Paige), the daughter of Mayor Volson, so they have connections.
Rick Jr. remains a kid on the outside of all this until a pair of FBI agents (Jennifer Jason Leigh and Rory Cochrane) show up, interrogating Rick Sr. about his shady gun sales, until they spy Rick Jr. in the next room. Dad tries to keep them away from his young son but they approach him on the street when he isn’t around. With the help of a Detroit policeman, narcotics detective named Jackson (Brian Tyree Henry), relentlessly pressure the then 15-year-old to buy drugs for them until he gives in.
Director Yann Demange also directed ’71, a powerful, complex thriller about a soldier during the Irish Troubles. Here Demange skillfully imbues this tense urban story with a sadness and horror that suggests Shakespearean tragedy, with a touch of “Death of a Salesman” is the father’s cluelessness.
It is thought-provoking film, an intelligent and nuanced exploration of urban decay, as well as a jaw-dropping personal story. The story takes place at the height of the cocaine epidemic in the mid ’80s, but through this personal story, the film explores the impact of the collapse of the manufacturing industry in Detroit and other manufacturing cities. The loss of jobs leads to crumbling infrastructure, social decay and the rise of drug culture and crime. In this violence-filled place, economic opportunities evaporates, leaving drugs as the seeming only option.
The characters are complicated and go against our expectations for this kind of story, one about people caught up in awful circumstances and a story full of shades of gray. McConaughey turns in a striking performance as Rick Sr., a dad who clearly loves his son but can’t bring himself to do the one thing that might save him: move out of his old neighborhood. Young Richie Merritt plays young Rick as a pleasant kid, a good kid but his rather neutral performance is overshadowed by other actors in this strong cast.
Jennifer Jason Leigh and Rory Cochrane play the ambitious, nameless FBI agents with a cold, sinister seductiveness that chills the viewer. There is much more menace to them than Rick’s friend’s relatives in the drug business, who do nothing to recruit him. These agents care only about information and there is more than a hint of child exploitation in what they do. The FBI agents push him into helping them, seeming to assume if he lives there, he’s fair game, despite Rick’s youth.
Bruce Dern and Piper Laurie are good in their smaller roles as the grandparents, loving their on and grandchildren but confused and saddened by what is happening to their family, and Bel Powley is good as the beloved older sister that young Rick works hard to save from addiction. RJ Cyler, who as so good in ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL, does not get much screen time as best friend Boo, but Eddie Marsan shines in a small part as drug kingpin Art Derrick. Jonathan Majors, Rapper YG and Taylour Paige give nuanced performances as young people shaped by the devastated place their city has become.
While what ultimately happens to White Boy Rick is awful, some viewers might note that this kind of thing happens to many others growing up in inner cities, and more often to black kids in particular. At one point, one of the black characters even points out racism in the criminal justice system, noting that if young Rick is caught by police he would do “white time” while the black character who face much harsher “black time.”
WHITE BOY RICK is a gripping film, sad and frightening, but a film well worth seeing, It goes far beyond a personal tale to say something meaningful about our society. The drama/thriller that has impressed audiences at the Toronto film festival and seems poised to be a contender for wards in coming months.
RATING: 4 out of 5 stars
