WHITE BOY RICK: Lacks The Moxie Of Its Inspiration

WHITE BOY RICK: Lacks The Moxie Of Its Inspiration

The road to cinema glory is paved with crime. Everybody loves a good mobster, drug dealer, or bank robber because their lives tend to be exciting and concise. They take risks, live big, and then crash back down to earth; a pleasing narrative that lends itself to action and gravitas.

Problem is that we’ve all seen that narrative hundreds of times, so any movie trying to replicate the format must find a way to distinguish itself. White Boy Rick tries to lean on an outlandish but true story to accomplish this: that of a teenage boy who cycled through the highs and lows of dealing guns and drugs while being an informant for the FBI.

It’s the kind of true crime jackpot that ticks all the boxes for the genre, but it ended up being so ineptly handled that frustration overwhelms curiosity. For every intriguing development and charming bit of ’80s flair there’re missing pieces and undercut performances, leaving White Boy Rick to flounder just like its inspiration.

A Failure Of Structure

If the youth of the film’s protagonist isn’t enough to hook you, know there’s a knockout ending that really makes this story worth telling. Being that it is historical fact, one would think the filmmakers wouldn’t wring their hands over spoiling it. Most movies like this open with a tantalizing fast forward, cluing in the audience of the terrible thing it’s building towards so stakes and themes can be more clearly established. I mean, this is such a common tactic that the last two films I’ve seen at the time of writing this review (Lizzie and Party Monster) follow this structure, with the latter even jokingly pointing out that it’s the obvious way to begin.

White Boy Rick: Lacks The Moxie Of Its Inspiration
source: Columbia Pictures 

White Boy Rick, however, is not smart enough to do this, instead telling its story as a straightforward timeline. While this theoretically makes the stuffed narrative easier to follow, it also makes the proceedings seem pedestrian and aimless, like watching a teenager make a series of shortsighted decisions (oh wait, that’s exactly what I was watching).

To make matters worse, the timeline is still overstuffed with events that must be gotten through. Because of this, nothing feels like it’s given adequate time to develop, instead only getting a brief mention before being tossed aside. This gives the film a rushed feeling without adding momentum, and eventually the piling events only make the film seem tiresome and overlong (a surprising fault for director Yann Demange’s follow-up to the electric ’71).

The task the filmmakers had was to take this packed story and shape it into something clear and engaging. That’s a basic task for anyone making a movie, and it’s one that White Boy Rick frustratingly fails at.

Missing The Point

Even with the mishandled narrative, Demange was clearly trying to say a lot with this story, and the ambition of it is something to be admired. He and his team weren’t just having fun with ’80s trends and a decaying Detroit (although the setting does allow the production work to shine), they were creating links to the modern day and showing the cause and effect of the time period’s mistakes.

White Boy Rick: Lacks The Moxie Of Its Inspiration
source: Columbia Pictures 

Specifically, the titular Rick (Richie Merritt) was still dependent on his family, and that foundation turned out to be as unstable as the city he was navigating. His mother was gone long before the film begins and his father (a trademark slimy-but-charming Matthew McConaughey) struggled to hustle up money and raise his two kids. The elder sister played by Bel Powley quickly becomes lost to addiction, and it’s heavily implied that Rick’s many gigs are misguided attempts to bring his family back together.

The traps of the illicit drug industry is heavily explored, as is the punishment difference between the predominantly black targets of the FBI investigation and Rick’s presumed lighter treatment as a white kid. All of this is pretty well-trod territory, and the bits that give this story an interesting perspective are held back until the very end. That means you get a full 90 minutes of feeling like you’ve been there, done that before the rug gets pulled out from under you, and in the rush to wrap everything up, the twists aren’t even fully explored.

It’s another example of how the film’s chosen structure undercuts its potential, leaving the movie not just frustratingly unengaging, but empty, too.

Reveling In Dour Reality

As I’ve already referenced, White Boy Rick captures ’80s Detroit with style, leaning into the unmistakable fashion and hair trends to give the movie a firm sense of place. The problem is that ’80s Detroit was pretty cold and dreary, which does nothing to liven up an already flat film.

White Boy Rick: Lacks The Moxie Of Its Inspiration
source: Columbia Pictures 

Granted, the filmmakers were stuck with the setting, but they decided early on to take a risk with the lead role and cast a regular teen. An untrained actor can lend an air of authenticity, but it also comes at the risk of an underwhelming central performance. Unfortunately, the latter happened for White Boy Rick.

Merritt is certainly believable in the title role, but he lacks that spark, that openness that makes you want to watch great actors. Add in that he’s constantly working against much more interesting actors like McConaugheyJennifer Jason Leigh, and RJ Cyler, and the deficiency becomes gratingly apparent. He was simply not capable of elevating the weak script, and it seems that it was this combination that doomed the film before the cameras even rolled.

White Boy Rick: Lays There Like A Slug

An intriguing story is almost enough to sell White Boy Rick, but multiple storytelling failures makes it an utterly forgettable outing. It leaves one wondering how it all went so unspectacularly wrong; there was guns, drugs, sex, and betrayal, after all. The saying goes that the story writes itself, but White Boy Rick shows that even the best tales can be crafted into a boring, listless film.

Did you find White Boy Rick to be very entertaining? Were you aware of the true story going in? Let us know in the comments!

White Boy Rick is out now in the US and opens December 7th, 2018 in the UK. For international release dates, click here.

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