White Boy Rick

I can remember the trailer vividly, easy considering how it was eventually placed in front of every non-“family” movie. We get a slightly disjointed view (you know how trailers is) of what looks like the rise – and likely fall – of a young drug dealer in Detroit in the ‘80s. Behind it all is a nice, possibly remixed version of “I Feel Love” (I can never tell with disco songs whether or not they’re remixed or just cut for the purposes of trailers). This trailer made the story out to be something highly dramatic, stylish, and maybe even a little gritty, with a kiss of humor for good luck. Gotta say, I’m gonna haveta disagree with this version of events.

White Boy Rick tells the apparently mostly-true story of a teenage white kid in Detroit whose family is sorta down on its luck: The single father is a gun dealer with his head quixotically in the clouds, his daughter is becoming estranged and getting into drugs, and his son looks to be going nowhere fast. Little Rick gets his foot in the door with some local dealers when he flips some knock-off AKs on them (complete with homemade silencers, natch, gotta get the fries with the burger, as the film tells us). This alerts the local authorities, though, who, in return for not busting them on illegal manufacturing and whatnot, compel young Rick into basically becoming a mole for them within the dealer network, setting him up with a supply and some initial contacts. His rise through the ranks sorta/kinda follows the arc depicted in the trailer, but with some decent deviations.

Still, this isn’t the usual such story, along the lines of Scarface and Blow, among others. Sure, this is part of it, but it’s almost an afterthought, despite it taking up a significant amount of the runtime. There is an interesting throughline involving the strange intrafamilial dynamics of Rick’s clan, and this is potentially the best part of the film, but just when things threaten to get deep or interesting, we’re shuffled back onto the drug-dealing train. And this train is not well-maintained. All of the plot beats are rotely touched on, as if the filmmakers knew they had a formula to follow, and the narrative never achieves anything singular or exceptional with the material. They purposefully eschew an interesting discussion on family by focusing on the surrounding context, even though said context is well-trod and rather dull here. Indeed, everything has a lugubrious feel to it, nothing engrossing or exciting in any palpable way makes its way to our eyes.

Even the talented cast doesn’t seem too involved. Matthew McConaughey turns in a mostly strong performance, even making me a little misty near the end, and Bel Powley (whom we remember from Wildling earlier this year) does well enough, but star Richie Merritt seems barely into the story he’s leading. Admittedly, the script paints him as something of a plain dullard, but he often disappears into the background of scenes centering on him, a feat I haven’t seen duplicated in some time. It was nice to see Jennifer Jason Leigh and my boy Rory Cochrane again, both playing cop roles, but they have little to do and often seem far away, thinking of stronger outings elsewhere.

Much like Black Mass, any talent involved here is wasted on a story that’s cold and empty and goes nowhere interesting. It’s nowhere near as exciting or noteworthy as the trailer wanted us to believe, but I guess it would have been bad form to meekly nudge a lackluster film on us in a lackluster manner. It might be worth a free viewing later on down the road, but expectations had better be kept decidedly low.