White Boy Rick (2018)

17 Sunday Mar 2019

Tags

Bel Powley, Crime, Detroit, Drama, Drug dealing, FBI, Matthew McConaughey, Review, Richie Merritt, The Eighties, True story, Yann Demange

D: Yann Demange / 111m

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Richie Merritt, Bel Powley, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Brian Tyree Henry, Rory Cochrane, RJ Cyler, Jonathan Majors, Eddie Marsan, Taylour Paige, Bruce Dern, Piper Laurie

Detroit, 1984. Richard Wershe (McConaughey) and his fourteen year old son, Rick (Merritt), are a staple at gun shows. Richard purchases guns that he then re-sells on the street, but when he modifies a couple of rifles, Rick has the idea to sell them to a local drug dealer, Johnny ‘Lil Man’ Curry (Majors). Later, he’s approached by two FBI agents, Snyder (Leigh) and Byrd (Cochrane); they make it known that one of the modified rifles was used to kill a man.Using this as a means to persuade him, Snyder and Byrd get Rick to start making drug buys as a way of infiltrating Lil Man’s operation. Once on the inside, Rick does his best to keep things from his father, while learning the tricks of the trade – tricks that come in handy when Lil Man and his crew are arrested and Rick decides that he needs a way to make money for himself, his father and sister, Dawn (Powley), and his infant son. Soon he’s in a similar position to the one that Lil Man had, but inevitably there are consequences…

A story that would stretch credulity if it hadn’t really happened, Rick Wershe’s involvement with the FBI and his subsequent life of crime should be a movie slam dunk, the equivalent of a football striker faced with an open goal (to mix sports metaphors). And while White Boy Rick benefits from two detailed and persuasive performances from McConaughey and Merritt (making his movie debut), the screenplay by Andy Weiss and Logan and Noah Miller lacks cohesion and a clear through line – though it does try its best. Rick’s story has to vie with several others, and it’s this approach that stops the movie from being as compelling as it should be. Alongside Rick’s fall from grace, the narrative momentum stops from time to time to catch up with Dawn’s on-going drug addiction and Rick’s efforts to help her (the script never quite grasps the irony of a drug dealer trying to get someone off of drugs), and Rick’s continuing liking for Lil Man’s wife, Cathy (Paige), whom he gets into bed with in more ways than one. These and other secondary storylines hamper the flow of the movie, and with its jumping from year to successive year between 1984 and 1987, the episodic nature of the material means that the cast have to work extra hard to keep it all afloat.

In the end, some of the background details have more resonance and relevance than expected, as with the deprived lower middle class neighbourhood that the Wershes live in offering a powerful reason for Rick’s turning to drug dealing as a way out. Looking out for his family is another, and taking advantage of what he’s learnt through working for the FBI allows Rick to be successful in his chosen field (more irony that the script doesn’t explore). But Rick is also a mixture of brains and naïveté, enjoying the rewards of drug dealing while ignoring the object lesson given by Lil Man’s arrest and incarceration: the FBI will always get you in the end (and even if you’ve been an informant for them). Merritt is completely convincing as Rick, cocky and unfazed by anything and everything at fourteen, more mature and focused but still easily outwitted at seventeen, and with that sense of invincibility that every teenager has. He’s matched by McConaughey, his beaten down father still hanging onto dreams of success, even if they’re modest dreams, and always looking to be the best role model for his children that he can be. Make no mistake, both father and son are flawed characters, with a penchant for moral compromise when it can benefit them both, but the bond between them gives the movie an emotional component that is missing elsewhere. Now, if the movie had focused on their relationship to the exclusion of everything else…

Rating: 6/10 – good performances all round and solid direction from Demange aren’t enough to stop the viewer from realising that White Boy Rick is not exactly involving, and that even though the majority of it is true, it’s not always as interesting as its screenplay tries to make out; with a smattering of laughs, and moments of sudden violence to leaven the evenness of the material, this is a movie that tries hard in some places, unconvincingly in others, and which often feels the strain of the effort it’s making.

Homefront (2013)

19 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Action, Clancy Brown, DEA agent, Drug dealing, James Franco, Jason Statham, Kate Bosworth, Review, Sylvester Stallone, Thriller, Winona Ryder

D: Gary Fleder / 100m

Cast: Jason Statham, James Franco, Izabela Vidovic, Winona Ryder, Kate Bosworth, Marcus Hester, Clancy Brown, Rachelle Lefevre, Omar Benson Miller, Frank Grillo, Chuck Zito, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Austin Craig

Adapted by Sylvester Stallone from Chuck Logan’s novel of the same name – and once considered as the basis for a Rambo movie – Homefront finally makes it to the big screen with fellow Expendable Jason Statham in the lead role instead.

With its throwback style reminiscent of Seventies action movies such as Walking Tall, and Gator, Homefront settles into a familiar groove from the start, with undercover DEA agent Phil Broker (a badly bewigged Statham) having infiltrated drug dealing bikers The Outcasts. When an attempt to bust them goes wrong, it leaves Outcasts kingpin Danny T (Zito) swearing revenge on Broker and his family. Two years on and Broker has recently moved to the sleepy town of Rayville; in the meantime his wife has died and he’s left to bring up their nine year old daughter Maddy (Vidovic) all by himself. A playground altercation with bully Teddy Klum (Craig) – Maddy gives him a bloody nose – leads to Teddy’s mom Cassie (Bosworth) seeking revenge. She enlists the help of her brother, Gator (Franco), a local meth dealer. When Gator finds out about Broker’s past he decides to let the remaining Outcasts deal with him; using his girlfriend Sheryl (Ryder) as an intermediary, Gator works out a deal where the Outcasts will distribute his drugs nationally in exchange for Broker’s whereabouts.

With its surprisingly leisurely pace, Homefront is a formulaic and professional Hollywood action movie, competently made, with no surprises and reminiscent of every other stranger-comes-to-town movie you’ve ever seen. It allows Statham to stretch his acting muscles a little, sets up Franco as the baddest badass on the block only to renege on the deal two thirds in, puts Brown in uniform as the dishonest sheriff in Gator’s pocket (but does nothing more with it than that), gives Bosworth a chance to release her inner skank for a while, and sidelines Lefevre as Broker’s potential love interest at around the halfway mark. Stallone’s script is full of these undeveloped story lines, and character arcs that are either cut short or allowed to peter out, all in order to allow more time for the action beats and the extended section where the Outcasts are brought back in. It’s this part of the movie that is the most disappointing as the running time is padded out unnecessarily: Gator tells Sheryl to contact Danny T’s lawyer (Vince), Sheryl contacts him, he speaks to Danny T, Sheryl reports back to Gator, Sheryl meets Danny T’s lieutenant Cyrus (Grillo), and then the Outcasts travel to Rayville. It all takes way too long, and all to set up the final showdown between Broker, Gator and the bikers which ends up being a two-part affair (and poorly edited at that).

While it’s always good to see Statham kick ass – a fight at a gas station is probably the movie’s highlight – here he’s asked to be conflicted about his violent abilities. It’s not entirely successful, focusing as it does on the effect Broker’s activities have on Maddy. The problem is that Broker has taught Maddy self-defence already (that’s how she gives Teddy a bloody nose) and is really pleased with her for standing up for herself. And yet when he has to defend himself and Maddy witnesses it, she acts horrified and troubled. This raises the question of whether she knows what Broker did for a living (after all she’s old enough to know); it’s never referred to, though, and remains just another loose end in a movie that litters them like confetti.

The deficiencies of Stallone’s script aside, Homefront at least looks good, its Louisiana locations shot in that slightly rosy glow beloved of so many cinematographers (here Theo van de Sande), and Statham acquits himself well. Vidovic is captivating, Franco and Ryder do their best with roles too underwritten to care about, there’s too little screen time for Brown, and for once, the “black sidekick/friend/new acquaintance” (Miller) doesn’t get killed in the crossfire, but actually kills one of the bikers when they attack Broker’s home. The only real surprise is Bosworth, raging at the mouth, swearing like a motherf*cker, and fit to explode from the anger she has pent up inside her. Sadly, the script requires her to undergo a sea change, and this unfortunately robs her character of any further credibility, but for the first thirty minutes or so she steals the movie completely.

Rating: 5/10 – a misfire on so many levels, Homefront suffers from an unpolished script and lacklustre direction; technically solid with a couple of good fight scenes involving Statham (which you’d expect anyway), this never really matches up to its potential.