I grew up in Detroit in the late 1970s during the wild west days of Detroit's drug trade. I lived on the Northwest side of the city, where the dominant force was a gang called Young Boys Incorporated. Around the same time, on the East side, the Curry gang was operating. Within those circles, a fourteen-year-old white kid named Rick Wershe Jr. slowly rose to power. First, as an informant for the FBI. Later, moving weight. When I saw a movie trailer featuring a story that hit this close to home, I knew I had to see it. I have been anticipating this movie for a while, in spite of the fact that I generally dislike films that even moderately glamorize criminals. The film takes its title from Wershe's nickname, White Boy Rick.
Rick Wershe Sr. (Matthew McConaughey) was a gun dealer who raised his two children on the East side of Detroit. His daughter Dawn (Bel Powley) struggled with substance abuse, while his son Rick Jr. (Richie Merritt) helped offload guns to local drug dealers. Guns with illegal silencers made in the basement of Wershe's east-side home. When Rick Sr. gets sideways with the FBI for that lapse in judgment, his son is approached by the FBI to do some buys at local drug houses. Rick ends up working with a notorious local drug lord named Johnny Curry (Jonathan Majors) while working with the FBI to set Curry up.
Rick Jr. is eventually shot in the stomach, leading the FBI and local police to cut him loose as an informant. Rick Jr. takes up the drug trade to make money, moving heavy weight when he is eventually busted by the Detroit Police with eight kilos of cocaine in his possession. In anticipation of leniency, Rick works with the FBI to uncover corruption within the Detroit Police Department that reaches all the way to the Mayor's office. However, his sentence is not reduced. He ends up serving the longest sentence of a juvenile offender in Michigan history.
I look at this story on two levels. As cinema and as reality. The writers who put this screenplay together did an excellent job of making the Wershe's seem like victims of circumstance while adding an element of culpability to their own actions. However, it felt to me that the realities were downplayed quite a bit. That is good for cinema, bad for truth. While it is true that Wershe served a much longer sentence than he should have, particularly given his cooperation with authorities, he was moving heavy weight. In the 1980s, a gram of cocaine cost around one hundred dollars. Eight kilograms would be the equivalent street value of $800,000 uncut. More if it is cut or converted to crack cocaine.
Wershe may have been seventeen when he was arrested, but he was sitting on a million dollar stash of cocaine. The movie depicts Wehrle as a "non-violent offender," but case law on that differs. Distribution of drugs is considered a violent crime. One can agree or disagree with that notion, but it is an accepted legal principle. The story is presented over a period of years, with some of the timing a bit altered to add sympathy to the title character as well as to move the story along. It needed whatever help it could get as the pacing was sluggish at time. In spite of the pacing, the characters were nicely rendered, giving them decent depth. I felt connected enough to the story to remain interested even when the story lagged a bit.
I have long been a fan of McConaughey. He offers a stabilizing foundation for the newcomer, Richie Merritt. I would not have guessed this was Merritt's first film. Merritt did a solid job as a street hustler. He doesn't have Hollywood good looks, but he was strong. I like this kid. Veterans Bruce Dern and Piper Laurie make small appearances adding some credibility to this film. Dern is almost comic relief as Rick's grandfather. Jennifer Jason Leigh and Rory Cochrane were solid as the mildly slimy FBI agents. I have a feeling their characters may have been warped a bit for dramatic effect. Majors is a relative new-comer to Hollywood, but appears to be in high demand in the coming year. We will see more of him. The casting helped this film, bringing us characters that didn't seem that different than the people we know. That humanized the story and helped make it connect. In spite of my own difficulties when it comes to portraying criminals as victims.
White Boy Rick is rated R by the MPAA. The story is about a drug organization and has heavy references to the drug trade as well as gun running. That was probably enough to get close to an R rating. The film also had some violence, which includes the title character getting shot in the stomach and a bit of gore depicted during his subsequent surgery. There is a very brief bit of nudity in a strip club, strong language throughout the film and adult themes. The film is not intended for younger audiences and does not hold value for young viewers. This film is definitely geared toward a teen audience or older. The film has a run time of one hour 51 minutes.
I apparently liked White Boy Rick better than the aggregate of IMDb voters. That surprises me a bit. I figured my own prejudices would drive down my vote below the average. Maybe my allegiance to my hometown gets in the way. This film wasn't perfect, but I felt is was better than the current 6.7 aggregate rating. The characters are done well and the story has some interesting elements, in spite of the script writers taking some liberties with the truth. The fundamentals are sound. I enjoyed the narrative arc and felt the characters were real. That relied heavily on the performances. If this film is a gauge, Merritt should be getting more work in the future. He was solid. I am going to recommend this film with a solid rating of 7.5/10. It was better than it should have been.
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