Checked out the new movie White Boy Rick, based on the trust story (slightly altered) of a Detroit teenager in the 80s who becomes a bit of a drug kingpin. This isn’t a story I knew about but watched a short doc on YouTube that suggests some of the plot points weren’t quite right…
The film is about Detroit teen Rick between 1984 and 1987 as he moves from selling the knock-off AK47s his dad buys at gunshows to selling fairly large amounts of drugs. Through most of this, he’s also working for the FBI and the local cops as an informant. He gets the sales while helping take down his friends. He then – minor spoiler – winds up in prison for life for “non-violent crimes”.
My biggest problem with this movie is that it wants us to feel sympathy for a kid who sells these silenced automatic weapons to known drug dealers. There’s a scene where young Rick tells his dad that they can’t keep living this way… selling guns and talking big about starting a video store but never doing it. But his solution is to start selling drugs… where the REAL money is. Thumbs up, pal. Hashtag lifegoals.
This would be ok if the film wasn’t trying to play sympathy cards. Yes, maybe he got screwed over by the system but they also don’t pretend he wasn’t a drug kingpin and arms dealer. A more direct, more objective approach to the source material would have been an improvement.
I dunno… I was kind of distracted and bored about half way through this movie. It didn’t help that the characters were anything but sympathetic (weird also that, according to that YouTube video, they softened them up for the movie and didn’t go into all their crimes). It’s a well acted film and its an interesting bit of Detroit history, but it fails as a movie as presented.
Score: 68