“White Boy Rick” is a welcome surprise, absorbing you into its micro chasm of crime with meticulous production design recreating Detroit in the 1980s and featuring a breakout acting performance by newcomer Richie Merritt in the title role.
“White Boy” is the true story of Rick Wershe Jr. (Merritt) who, in 1984 at the age of 15, was recruited by the FBI to become an informant and aid them in quelling Detroit’s growing crack cocaine epidemic. As with all good crime dramas, it’s an offer Rick can’t refuse: become an informant or your Dad goes to jail.
Rick’s dad is Richard Wershe (Matthew McConaughy), a small-time firearms dealer who ekes out a living just below the line where cops care about what he’s doing. After Richard acquires a pair of AK-47s at a gun show and modifies them with silencers, Rick sells these AKs to his best friend’s brother, a local drug kingpin named Johnny ‘Lil Man’ Curry (Jonathan Majors). The FBI and Detroit PD want to bring down Curry, but Curry’s marriage to the mayor’s niece are throwing a political bug in the ointment. Needing their own undercover bug to trudge through the corrupt slime, they see Rick walk into Curry’s and formulate their plan to recruit/blackmail Rick.
In the years from 1984 to 1987, we watch as Rick goes though the trademark trappings of crime dramas and gangster films. In the course of him being close to the Currys without them suspecting his FBI involvement, Rick’s also trying to keep his family together by keeping Dad in the dark to protect him while trying to bring his estranged drug-addicted sister Dawn (Bel Powley) back home. It’s a slippery slope Rick slides until, having acquired drug dealing knowledge from the feds, he becomes a kingpin in his own right, right down to the white Mercedes the 18 year-old eventually drives with a “SNOWMAN” vanity plate. While Rick may seem untouchable from what he’s done and what he knows, we know the line between cops and criminals eventually blurs and every action has its consequences.
“White Boy” sets itself apart from standard crime dramas by focusing on family over felonies; the father and son relationship between Rick and Richard give Merritt and McConaughy’s scenes together the film’s foundation. When Rick offers Richard the chance to sell drugs as a quick cash grab to get out of town, Richard refuses any part of drug dealing: drugs are bad; guns are a constitutional right. Ever the deluded dreamer, Richard just wants to get enough cash together selling guns to open a video store and stay in Detroit. Merritt shows Rick’s exasperation well against the stubborn insanity McConaughy displays in Richard, a man who believes the same thing he’s been doing will yield better results.
Apart from a uniformly good cast that includes Jennifer Jason Lee, Bruce Dern and Piper Laurie, director Yann Demange gives “White Boy Rick” a great look and gritty realism; it feels like you’re watching a documentary. More than gold chains or Cadillacs in the rain, I can’t remember a movie that transported me back in time as completely, and that’s all due to Stefania Cella’s production design. But it’s Richie Merritt as Rick that really adds the realism- maybe because he’s never acted before or because Rick’s character has more things thrust upon him than he initiates, a lot of Rick’s time is spent watching and reacting as he juggles family, the cops and the criminals in an ever-increasing downward spiral. Merritt’s acting looks natural, reminiscent of a young Method actor.
For a fresh face in an old genre, “White Boy Rick” will be music to your ears.