White Boy Rick--A few weeks ago we had Kin, and now here's another story about a heavily-armed teenager in the dreary streets of Detroit. A real-life inner city Baltimore teen named Richie Merritt plays the title role in this strange true crime period piece. It's about Richard Wershe, Jr., known in the Motor City in the '80s as White Boy Rick, who at fourteen became the youngest-ever FBI informant, and later became a crack merchant himself, all before he was old enough to legally buy beer.
This isn't Scarface, however. There are reports that the film softens the edges of the truth considerably, but at least as depicted by the French director Yann Demange and played by Merritt, Rick was a quiet, nonviolent young man who fell into crime trying to help his broke, troubled family--his big-talking, small-potatoes gun dealer dad (Matthew McConaughey), his drug-addled sister Dawn (Bel Powley) and his cantankerous grandparents (Bruce Dern and Piper Laurie) across the street. Something about Rick's unaggressive yet direct manner inspires trust, including in the drug dealers that buy his old man's firearms and in the FBI agents and Detroit cops that are stalking them, so he drifts into their world without trying to.
The film is full of excellent acting, notably by McConaughey as the dad, portrayed here, rather rosily but effectively, as a loving man who tries, through American-dream bravado, to navigate around the moral bogs from which he draws his livelihood. There's also Powley, a Brit brilliantly and heartbreakingly convincing as the crackhead sister, not to mention Jennifer Jason Leigh and Rory Cochrane as two feds that don't inspire a lot of trust.
But Merritt, a novice to acting, holds his own as the star presence in the film. It isn't just that he feels authentic--the whole movie feels almost as authentic as a documentary, despite the famous actors in it, and despite its liberties with history. But there's also a sweetness, even a guilelessness to Merritt that made me feel protective toward him.
Something feels missing from White Boy Rick at a thematic level; despite the outrageousness of the story and of the outcome of Rick's case, Demange can't seem to figure out what point he's making with it, and this leaves a gap in the movie's reason for existing. But the acting and atmosphere fill that gap--it's never less than gripping, it's often funny, it's ultimately touching.
Not long ago, on one of the retro TV cable networks, I happened to see "The Bard," an episode of The Twilight Zone from 1963 featuring the young Burt Reynolds. His part was small but memorable: He was playing a self-impressed method actor, obsessed with "tertiary motivation" and the like, that was transparently a spoof of Marlon Brando.
Reportedly, Reynolds had run into trouble early in his career because of his resemblance to Brando; it supposedly kept him from being cast in a supporting part in Sayonara. So he may have taken a special glee in his Twilight Zone role. In any case, he was funny.
Reynolds, who passed on earlier this month at 82, was always funny. Even when he played steely-eyed action heroes, there was usually an underlying irony that came through, as if he couldn't (or wouldn't) fully commit to the tough guy persona. At times, notably in a few late '70s-early '80s efforts like The End, Paternity and Best Friends, and especially in his fine star turn in 1979's Starting Over, he displayed a striking vulnerability. But on the whole, he isn't an actor you associate with a lot of emotional range--he's more like a sly, mischievous friend who's fun to hang out with now and then precisely because his company is so undemanding.
But within that limited range, he was able to carve out a career for himself as a true movie star--indeed, along with Clint Eastwood, he was one of the last of the old-school American male stars. When you run down the list of his films, you'll notice, along with plenty of real dreck, how many thoroughly substantive and re-watchable pictures he made: Deliverance, of course, and The Longest Yard and chase flicks like White Lightning and Gator and that cornpone classic Smokey and the Bandit and, maybe best of all among his car-crash comedies, 1978's Hooper, and his slightly underrated caper movie Rough Cut and his hilarious cameo in Mel Brooks' Silent Movie and his capable leading man work in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. I even found his Elmore Leonard-based 1985 misfire Stick, which he also directed, sort of compelling.
Later on he did notable turns in Bill Forsythe's Breaking In, and on television in Evening Shade, and in character parts in Citizen Ruth and Striptease. And in 1997 came his Oscar-nominated performance as the inscrutably easygoing porn director in Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights. There's a lot of variety there, and a lot of fun. If he never quite scaled the heights that Brando did, he certainly transcended the youthful resemblance, and in his own way made at least as big a mark.
Tomorrow, Wednesday September 12 at 7 p.m., "No Festival Required" offers the documentary Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf, a portrait of the famed Dutch garden designer, at Third Street Theatre, Phoenix Center for the Arts. My pal Steve Weiss, longtime director of the not-a-fest, says it may be his favorite film he's ever presented, a "75-minute vacation," and a sorely needed one in these troubled times. I liked it a lot too.
Monster-of-the-Week is on hiatus these days, but there's a de facto MOTW in this week's box office champ, The Predator...
Check out my reviews of that film, Five Seasons and A Simple Favor online at Phoenix Magazine.
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