No. 322 : White Boy Rick (2018)

 

White Boy Rick at the IMDb

 Time for some true life crime biography next in the shape of this depressing and skuzzy drama that depicts the short crime life of Rick Wershe, who spent 30 odd years in jail prior to his recent release.

I had never heard of the case, but seemingly our hero was the youngest ever paid informant of the FBI at age 14 and the longest serving non-violent prisoner in the US penal system. These things considered, I had little sympathy for our protagonist and as such did not have too much affection for his bio-pic. That said, it was a decent offering but not one to love; more of a morality tale to remind you to stick in at school and not get involved in the selling of guns and narcotics. Duh.

We open with the young Richie and his Dad, Matthew McConaughey, buying firearms at a gun show. No, not me at the gym, an actual event for the sale of firearms. The 14 year old Richie spots a fake Kalashnikov which enables is Dad to get a good deal from the dealer. They make even more profit when Richie sells on the guns to the local drug lords with the addition of silencers, that Mahogany fashions in his basement.

Mahogany dreams of owing a video store - it is 1984 after all - and doesn’t mind dealing with drug pedlars, despite his own daughter being addicted to crack, if it helps to achieve his goal. Richie’s ‘in’ with the drug barons catches the attention of the FBI and soon agent Jennifer Jason Leigh has Richie on the payroll. They convince Ritchie to buy and later sell drugs so that they can infiltrate the gang. This doesn’t go well for Richie who gets a bullet in his guts for his trouble.

With no other means of support and a new baby to provide for, Richie starts to produce his own crack. Inevitably he gets caught and his FBI handlers are as much use as a cock flavoured lolly pop when Richie goes down for life. How did it end up here and can he cut a deal to earn his freedom? Is he a victim of society or a death dealer who got his just desserts?

This was a decent period offering with a great cast, but the subject matter and viewpoint weren’t to my liking and to be honest, to my mind, Richie got what he deserved. He was well played by the slow talking, but likeable Richie Merritt, but I had no sympathy for the character or his choices. It was rote large that his options were limited but he was clearly a poor drug dealer and his motivations didn’t excuse his actions.

Matthew McConaughey was good in his now familiar role of the lowlife scumbag - see ‘Killer Joe’ and his series of ‘True Detective’, but he couldn’t rescue the narrative here. He was a gun dealer who bought into his son’s drug ambitions. I liked the line when he said he’d maintained a good family and Richie pointed out he had a drug addict daughter and a screwed up son. You could say this was just a slice of life in the 1980s but why was Richie deserving of a bio-pic? He was made out to be on a path with no exits, but to accept that would be just accepting his criminal choices.

The period was well realised and there was an excellent supporting cast including a never rougher Jennifer Jason Leigh and a frankly miscast Eddie Marsan as some sort of drug lord.

The film ended with captions suggesting that Richie had been harshly treated but the film failed to elicit any sympathy from this viewer. There was no suggestion that Richie didn’t know what he was getting into, and although he inhabited a world with few options that didn’t excuse him dealing in deadly drugs.

When you have no sympathy for the lead in a bio-pic it’s hard for it to succeed but overall this was a well realised and enjoyable film, albeit one with a skewed moral compass.

Best Bit : Bruce Dern makes Pancakes ‘W’ Rating 17/23

No.211 : Will Penny (1967)

Will Penny at the IMDb

According to IMDb ‘Will Penny’ is Charlton Heston’s favourite of his own movies. He must have forgotten about ‘The Omega Man’ and ‘Soylent Green’ when he said that! Still it is a great picture with lots of the components one always needs in a truly enjoyable western.

Despite only being 45 when the film was made Heston plays an ageing cowboy who is nearing the end of his usefulness in the old west. I suppose 45 was probably a good age back then but sitting here aged 44 I feel he had plenty left on the clock despite being regarded as the old timer.

Anyway, we join Charlton and the cow pokes at the end of a cattle drive. They get paid off by their boss and discuss what their options are. Chuck isn’t seen as a viable candidate for the next drive and instead he heads off with The Six Million Dollar Man and Mathias whom he would later cross swords with in ‘The Omega Man’.

After a brief scene reminiscent of ‘Brokeback Mountain’ where Steve Austin and Mathias emerge from beneath a blanket in their long johns there is a stand off with a gang of brigands who try to claim an elk they shot is rightfully theirs - the bastards! A brief shoot-out sees a bad guy killed and Mathias gut shot but we haven’t seen the last of them - well they do have Donald Pleasance and Bruce Dern in their number, and they aren't getting paid for one scene!

Charlton and his pals make it to a remote outpost where the greedy owner tries to sell them a coffin while Mathias is still hanging on - still at least there is some tightly buttoned lady action on show! The lads soon go their own ways with Chuck taking on a job that involves him occupying a remote cabin up in the hills. When he arrives he finds the cabin occupied by squatters in the shape of a gun toting woman and her snot nosed boy.

Chuck gives them a few days to move out but while he’s camping out in the wilds he gets bushwhacked by Pleasance’s gang. Using bad guy logic they leave him to die in the wilderness rather than kill him on the spot, leaving him able to return injured to the cabin in his fetching long johns. He’s nursed back to health by the thawing widow, who despite saying they aren't friends, will clearly end up in the great man’s arms.

As romance blossoms the viewer is left to wonder when the bad guys will show up again and at what cost.

This was two thirds of a great film with the middle section letting the side down. It was fair enough to have the stoic range man find a bit of happiness but the scene with him making house ran too long, so it was a merciful release when the bad guys showed up again and chucked the Christmas tree on the fire.

Heston does well as the jaded cowpoke who finds it hard to let others into his life and he handles the brief action scenes well. Joan Hackett is fine as the love interest who is maybe a bit too keen to get Heston into the bath to support her hard-bitten exterior.

The bad guys were well cast but underused - Bruce Dern hardly had a line. Their undoing was also somewhat pat with them at first fighting over the plain widow before reinforcing the stereotype that bad guys can’t shoot for toffee.

The settings were great and the costumes and characters certainly evoked a grubbier Old West than perhaps we are used to. At about 100 minutes this is a good slice of western life with maybe not enough substance to have it live long in the memory.


Best Bit : Visitors at Christmas!

'W' Score 15/23

No.183 : World Gone Wild (1987)

World Gone Wild at the IMDb

Well here’s a first for the 100+ W Movies Quest - no not a reader, although that’d be nice - an actual request. OK it was a request borne out of vanity as the person making the request only did so as he almost shares the name of one of the characters, but we’ll take what we can get.

This dystopian action thriller is absolutely dreadful and I doubt you’d be able to find it anywhere apart from my hard drive and numerous land fill sites - but let’s have a look anyway.

The film opens with some scene setting narration. The production evidently didn’t have the cash for a scrolling paragraph so instead poor old Bruce Dern is tasked with setting the scene. It’s the late 21st century and a 75 year war has left most people dead and it hasn’t rained in 50 years. Realising their shaky premise and the abundance of clouds in the film, they add in ‘cruelly there are clouds but no rain’ - you can’t fault science like that.

After a dreadfully tacky credits sequence with the cheapest TV movie graphics and over filtered colours we get to the nub of the action. The writer has seen ‘Mad Max 2’ and thought ‘Yeah no one will notice if I steal that’ so he sets us up in a remote compound filled with people in white clothes and hair bands. He cleverly substitutes the rare resource from gasoline to water to make it all original. Anyway the school only has four books, so at least it’s an improvement from today’s education cuts - little bit of politics there, and the kids have no pencils and a teacher lacking most of her clothes.

The lesson on etiquette is interrupted when Adam Ant appears, towed by cape wearing lackeys, resplendent in his flying goggles and in a hollowed out helicopter. I ‘d say ‘you couldn’t make it up’ but clearly someone has - drugs really screw you up. Ant is playing the ridiculously named ‘Derek Abernathy’ and after spouting a lot of shite for five minutes starts shooting up all the peaceful locals along with his dead eyed henchmen. Total carnage is averted when Bruce Dern turns up and kills a bad guy by booting a hubcap into his throat - clearly he’s not a man to be messed with.

Ant crawls off with some of the settlement’s young men (Operation Yew Tree?) to brainwash them into his cult, yes that's cult, while those who remain take stock and fix their hair. They know Ant will be back and Dern sets off to town for reinforcements. The town is a hell hole with women in basques running about while dying babies are denied water. Sounds like my kinda town! After some recruiting of colourful sidekicks Dern returns to fortify the settlement and wait Ant’s next attack. Can the mismatched gang of renegades and mercenaries take on Ant’s formation bike riding team of white clad brainwashed youths? Will the inevitable explosions kick start the environment? Hell yes!

This blog has been guilty of exaggerating the awfulness of many films but I defy anyone to see this and declare it even a partial success. Well OK, pished up students may be able to laugh ironically at the many plot holes, dreadful acting and atrocious dialogue, but we’re a bit higher brow at this blog.

For a start where, in a world with no rain for 50 years, do they find an endless supply of brilliant white clothes, never mind endless bullets and enough TNT to make 9/11 look like a box of Aldi fireworks? For a world scrabbling in the dirt to survive everyone looks well nourished and there is frankly an over abundance of motorcycles and capes.

OK, we can set these gripes aside, as long as the cast is strong and the plot is tight and coherent. Er, sorry. Ant fails to stand and deliver in the acting stakes and it is baffling how he managed to get through the audition. To be fair in a film where “Does Pinocchio have a wooden dick?” is the best line, the standards were never going to be high. Bruce Dern fails to deliver his usual mania and he seems largely disinterested in a film that doubtlessly looked more fun in the script than in reality.

The gang of misfits were uniformly dreadful from ‘Nitro’ the dynamite expert to some other guy who created a ‘snake pit’ trap with precisely 4 small snakes in it - at least they squashed them together for the close up
shot - Indiana Jones this was not.

The plot was virtually non-existent and they even had two goes at the finale both of which failed to elicit any excitement or tension. Ant had one of the lowest key demises of any movie baddie despite being seemingly bullet proof for the first 90 minutes. The big conclusion was ridiculous as it was predictable and frankly if the new rains had washed this effort out of existence no one would be complaining. Well apart from Mr Abernethy at any rate…

W Rating 6/23
Best Bit - Ant ain't no Goody Two Shoes