White Boy Rick – first look review

Direc­tor Yann Demange deliv­ers a well-round­ed if occa­sion­al­ly mun­dane por­trait of Richard Wer­she Jr (new­com­er Richie Mer­ritt) in this grit­ty account of the true events that saw the reck­less teenag­er go from the youngest ever FBI infor­mant to the longest-serv­ing non-vio­lent offend­er in the Michi­gan prison system

To keep his gun-tot­ing father out of his prison, 14-year-old ​“Rick” begins work­ing for the FBI to infil­trate the drug cir­cuits in his Detroit neigh­bour­hood, endan­ger­ing his own life in the process. Falling into the crowd of the Cur­ry gang, a group of African-Amer­i­can drug deal­ers, Rick works his way up the lad­der of Detroit’s elite before becom­ing the lat­est vic­tim of a failed system.

Moments of excite­ment in the film feel dis­joint­ed as the stop-start nar­ra­tive strug­gles to run smooth­ly. Matthew McConaugh­ey is strong but rel­a­tive­ly unchal­lenged in his role as Richard Wer­she Sr, and the film real­ly hits its stride when the younger actors take cen­tre stage. Bel Pow­ley steals her lim­it­ed scenes with wide-eyed mania as Rick’s drug-addled sis­ter, Dawn. Mer­ritt and his Cur­ry gang co-stars bol­ster the com­e­dy through­out as much as they reflect the story’s inher­ent tragedy, the lost inno­cence of teenagers caught in a des­per­ate time in Amer­i­can history.

Bruce Dern and Piper Lau­rie as the Wer­she grand­par­ents com­plete the dys­func­tion­al fam­i­ly that facil­i­tates the trou­ble Rick and his father get them­selves into. The film fails to make the most of their humour and chem­istry, how­ev­er, sidelin­ing them in order to spot­light the father-son crim­i­nal duo. In doing so, it miss­es the oppor­tu­ni­ty to inter­ro­gate the Wershe’s dam­ag­ing lega­cy more thoroughly.

White Boy Rick also con­tains some iffy car­i­ca­tures, most notably a ques­tion­able Eddie Marsan as a Cuban drug deal­er, and amps up the gaudi­ness for the Cur­ry gang with exces­sive fur coats and gold chains. Despite these more clichéd images, the film does cap­ture a wider sense of the pover­ty and des­ti­tu­tion of 1980s Detroit. Aban­doned ware­hous­es and des­o­late indus­tri­al land back­drop the action, and con­ver­sa­tions hint at the broad­er cri­sis afflict­ing the city.

Yet a more nuanced exam­i­na­tion of the racial dis­par­i­ties with­in the drugs epi­dem­ic is missed. While Rick’s even­tu­al life sen­tenc­ing is unde­ni­ably harsh, the impact of white crim­i­nal­i­ty on the black com­mu­ni­ty is not addressed. Rick and his father fail to meet any real con­se­quences for their own role in a seem­ing­ly end­less cycle of crime, per­pet­u­at­ed by the gov­ern­ment and shoul­dered most heav­i­ly by the black com­mu­ni­ty. The film is most inter­est­ing when it looks beyond its tit­u­lar pro­tag­o­nist, but miss­es the chance to do this more.