Review #1,442: 'White Boy Rick' (2018)

If you've ever read up on Richard Wershe Jr, the drug kingpin whose life became the stuff of legend in the prion system over the years, you'll likely be aware that he was used as an FBI informant at just 14 years of age, while the Bureau funded his empire to keep him slinging on the streets and in the loop with any other criminal activity happening in his city of Detroit. After the FBI higher-ups discovered his age, they ditched him, and the dealer known as 'White Boy Rick' was eventually busted for selling cocaine and sentence to life in prison, a ridiculous sentence handed out via some Draconian law that has since been discarded. It's a fascinating, frustrating story that you wouldn't believe if it wasn't true, but Yann Demange's new film White Boy Rick doesn't quite know how to tell it. With so much to be told, the film seems to cast aside the central plot in favour of a domestic drama which, although terrifically acted by the whole cast, doesn't know where its priorities should lie.

We first meet the young Rick (Richie Merritt) at a gun show with his father Richard Sr. (Matthew McConaughey). Despite his baby face and bum-fluff upper-lip hair, Rick is confident and street-smart, teaming up with Old Man Wershe to hustle a salesman into selling two machine guns for a ridiculously knocked-down price. Rick Sr. deals guns for a living, but the business is far from prosperous, and he dreams of someday owning a video store and living within the law. His daughter Dawn (Bel Powley) has picked up a nasty drug habit, and the family-of-three regularly have shouting matches in the street. Luckily, Grandpa (Bruce Dern) and Grandma (Piper Laurie) are just down the street to lighten the mood. After pulling off a few arms deals with gangster 'Lil Man' Curry (Jonathan Majors), Rick Jr. works his way into the cocaine business under the wing of an African-American gang. It doesn't take him long to get busted, but FBI agents Snyder (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Byrd (Rory Cochrane), along with Detroit PD Detective Jackson (Brian Tyree Henry), are quick to pounce, handing the juvenile a fat pouch of cocaine to keep him in action, promising protection in exchange for information.

It's around this point that the script by Andy Weiss, Logan Miller and Noah Miler starts to lose control, struggling to grasp the message it's trying to convey in a blur of competing plot threads. The family drama at the very centre of Rick's life is given the most attention, and it's engrossing, often devastatingly raw stuff. Powley and McConaughey are standouts, the former wrestling with an addiction spiralling rapidly out of control and the latter blaming himself for the path his son has decided to take. Rick Sr. hates drugs because they devastate lives, yet his guns are used for multiple murders across the city. The domestic scenes are so well done that you almost forget there's another story being told, one that is setting Rick up for a lengthy term in slammer. So when these moments arrive, you never really understand what's going on.

Why exactly would the FBI put so much trust in a 14 year-old relatively new to the drugs scene, and just what does White Boy Rick do on a day-to-day basis? We don't really see him selling drugs, or spending money, or setting up contacts, or building this so-called empire, so Rick's real status and influence remains a mystery. Even his occasional meetings with Snyder and Bird are brief and bereft of information. Demange wants to make the point that Rick was ultimately set up by a government willing to ruthlessly exploit a minor for their own benefit, yet with so little time developing his criminal activities and relationship with the authorities, this aspect almost feels like an afterthought. As a portrait of family dysfunction, White Boy Rick excels, but if you want to really learn about how Richard Wershe Jr went from bread-line gun-runner to FBI informant to a landing a brutally unfair life sentence, I would opt for a Google.


Directed by: Yann Demange
Starring: Richie Merritt, Matthew McConaughey, Bel Powley, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Rory Cochrane, Brian Tyree Henry, Jonathan Majors, Bruce Dern, Piper Laurie
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie