White Boy Rick

"Your mother and I, we didn't plan on having Dawn, and to be honest we didn't plan on having you either....but in the end things worked out."

"Dad, your daughter is a junkie and I'm shitting into a bag."

"Ehh what can I say, I'm a glass half full kinda guy."

The relationship between Matthew McConaughey's Richard Snr and Richie Merritt's Rick Jnr is just one reason to enjoy this well worn tale of crime and punishment. It's nothing we haven't seen a million times before but their relationship is so well drawn and their characters are so well acted that this film will hook you and reel you in despite the squalor and misery depicted so achingly well onscreen. Director Yann Demange's follow up to his 2014 film '71 mightn't be as tight and focussed as his debut but for me, the performances here give it the edge.

Ricky is a very white face in a black city. Detroit in 1984 was a dump, the glory days of it's automotive success coming rapidly to an end. 15 year old Ricky uses his father's reputation as a gun dealer to gain an in with local gangs and before long he's running wild with them. All good things must come to an end when he's nabbed by the FBI and before long he becomes the youngest ever person working undercover for a law enforcement agency. The Feds though have a habit of chewing up their informants.

I liked this. As already said it's far from original but it got me right away because there's so much to like about it. The perfectly recreated and grimy 1980's. The soundtrack full of tunes that are both familiar and rarely used in film. The brazen way Ricky ingratiates himself with gangs who accept him despite his skin colour due to the no nonsense way he confidently carries himself. The fact that it's less about Ricky's life of crime than it is about his fractured relationship with his family. His relationship with his father and his sister (Bel Powley doing a lot with a little), tenderly drawn, at times they hate each other but you can always sense the love between them. A quiet chat on a porch. A peace offering of pancakes. A heart to heart through glass. A night time rescue. A hypocritical dad trying his best so his family can have a taste of the American dream he never reached.  

It's the family moments that give this film it's heart but they do tend to make the more conventional parts of the story look poor in comparison. The gang Rick joins is, apart from 1 or 2 members, so sketchily drawn that it's hard to know who's who at times and with so much gold and fur on show parts of the film veer dangerously close to feeling like a spoof. It does also get rather jarring when we keep switching back and forth between Rick's family life and his life of crime especially when one side is so much better. The pervasive sense of menace will always jolt you though and never let you forget you're watching the story of a boy so young he can't even grow a moustache yet.

Ronald Reagan's well documented war on drugs is a big plot point here and the movie gets great mileage out of taking shots at it. It's blinkered and short sighted approach left a lot of collateral damage in it's wake. People were chewed up in an attempt to win a battle that can never be won and the lawmakers didn't care a jot. It was a hypocritical battle too. Richard Snr's stance on guns mirroring America's own. Guns are good. Guns are the American way, a constitutional right. Guns are as much a path to death and destruction as any drug and during a father/son argument Rick points the double standard out, stunning his father into shamed silence.

It's hard to believe this is Richie Merritt's first film. He's excellent as the non-descript white boy who gets it in the neck. Matthew McConaughey is the MVP though. A ratty, sleazy looking gun dealer who genuinely wants the best for his kids but who goes about it in an awful way. An Oscar nod for best supporting actor wouldn't be out of the question for him next year. One scene of inter generational connection between him and his son is beautiful and will be the scene I remember from this in years too come. A lovely moment of tender calm amongst the AK-47's and grime.

Worth watching.