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The words “based on a true story” are emblazoned on the backs of a number of films screening at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. So far, the majority of the stories I’ve come across that bear this burden have been based on the lives of criminals or gang members. El Angel, an Argentine thriller, is about a teenage serial killer, “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” is about a writer who becomes a forger, and “White Boy Rick” is about a teenager who is sentenced to life in prison after committing a nonviolent drug offense.
Richard Wershe Jr. (Richie Merritt) was a 14-year-old with a troubled home life before becoming a notorious 17-year-old behind bars. Wershe Jr., affectionately known as White Boy Rick by his peers, stood by and watched his mother abandon their family. While his father, Rick Wershe Sr. (Matthew McConaughey), has a long-term dream of opening a chain of video stores, he is content for the time being to engage in the illegal trade of guns in both legal and illegal ways. Rick’s sister, Dawn (Bel Powley), develops a drug addiction and flees their home with her boyfriend, who is also a drug addict. By the time the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) recruits Rick to provide them with information and infiltrate a local gang, it’s almost like a miracle, providing Rick with an income and a lifestyle he could never have imagined—at a cost he could never have imagined.
Rick will find himself in the midst of his best and worst days within a few short years of his birth. During that time, he’ll have fathered a child, survived a shooting, and earned thousands of dollars from cocaine dealing—all before he’s old enough to vote or be tried as an adult.
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So much is at stake in Yann Demange’s film, and the stakes are high. So much of the film is spent building up anticipation for the worst-case scenario to come crashing down on them all, and when the crescendo finally arrives, you are caught off guard as well as the characters. Rick gets away with a lot of crimes, but he also has to deal with a lot of hardships, such as watching his sister spiral deeper into drug addiction and his ne’er-do-well father struggle to keep them afloat. Rick is played by newcomer Merritt, who portrays him as both a naive boy who pretends to be tough while also wanting to do the right thing. His performance has a childlike innocence to it that portrays him not as a psychopathic delinquent but rather as someone who believes that drug dealing is a way to provide for his family.
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Along with Merritt, McConaughey and Powley deliver some outstanding performances, including a heartbreaking scene in which the family patriarch wrests his strung-out daughter from a run-down house while she is screaming and kicking him to let go. A powerful moment, which is particularly reflected in Rick’s serene expression. He immediately appears to be his age, as if he has no idea what to say or do in such a difficult situation.
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Andy Weiss, Logan, and Noah Miller are all co-writers on “White Boy Rick,” which has three writers in total. There is one conversation about the differences between severing “black and white jail time,” which attempts to explain some of the disparities in the justice system. In Rick’s story, there is a lot that resonates with recent discussions about the prison industrial complex, as depicted in Ava DuVernay’s film “13th,” as well as discussions about mandatory minimum sentencing laws, which are particularly relevant when it comes to nonviolent drug offenses.
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Considering that we’re also debating what kinds of stories get told and what kinds of movies get funded, it’s worth noting that the problems depicted in “White Boy Rick” that disproportionately affect black and brown men are being embodied in popular culture by a white man’s story. Does this imply that his story is any more tragic than the stories of other men who have found themselves in the same situation? The story follows Rick as he ventures into Detroit’s criminal underworld, which is almost entirely depicted in the film as being populated by African-American males. They do not appear to have any family members. Fortunately, there is one scene in which Rick’s friendship with the black boys his age, who are growing away from the gang as they pick up girls and go to the drive-in movie, is shown to be developing. The way the camera first introduces us to the world of the skating rink, where Rick is following the gang, evokes a strange sense of otherness in the viewer. If Rick had grown up in Detroit, in a predominantly black neighborhood, this shouldn’t have seemed like such an exotic experience to him. Despite the fact that his experiences were adapted by other white men, it appears as if his story is being told by an outsider.
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A well-done family drama, “White Boy Rick” is only half-told, and it only lightly incorporates the more serious issues of systemic injustice into the narrative. The black characters in the film feel undervalued in comparison to their white co-stars; even Rick’s closest friend, Boo (RJ Cyler), is unremarkable in comparison. Contrary to the film’s flaws, the performances are strong: Bruce Dern, Piper Laurie and Jennifer Jason Leigh all give brief but effective performances that can be either comedic or exhilarating. Through saturated lighting that appears to stream in through dirty fluorescents or dying street lamps, Tat Radcliffe’s cinematography for “White Boy Rick” hits colorfully grim notes. Demange and Radcliffe collaborate once more on this film, following their previous collaboration on “’71,” in which they paint a bleak, bleak world. The true tragedy of “White Boy Rick” is that he is just one of millions of men who have lost years of their lives as a result of the injustice of our society.
This review was originally submitted on September 9th, 2018 from the Toronto International Film Festival, and has been updated.
For more personality quizzes check this: The Strangers Prey At Night Quiz.
