WHAT’S IT ABOUT
Rick Wershe is a single father who’s struggling to raise two teenagers during the height of the crack epidemic in 1980s Detroit. Wershe sells guns illegally to make ends meet but soon attracts attention from the FBI. Federal agents convince his son, Rick Jr., to become an undercover drug informant in exchange for keeping his father out of prison. When young Rick gets in too deep, he finds himself seduced by the lure of easy money and becomes a drug dealer himself.
MOVIESinMO REVIEW
Corruption, corruption, corruption. That’s the underlying story within the story. This “based on a true story” movie unveils the truth about everything we already knew about dirty cops, politicians, and life in a real underprivileged neighborhood. Set in 1984 – 1988, White Boy Rick tells the story of Rick Wershe Jr, a 14-year-old white kid growing up in Detroit. If you know criminal history, then not much in this movie factually will surprise you. Rick’s father bought, modified, and sold guns to whoever had the money to buy them, legally or illegally. This is where Rick Jr learned his people skills, which explains a lot about him and his attitude towards everyday life. I really applaud this film because nothing was over-glorified to make you want to be a dealer like what is seen in most other drug or gangster-type films. Although Rick’s father introduced him to the world of corruption, it was the feds that really turned him into what he became. The Feds manipulated Rick into buying drugs hoping to catch the real suppliers. From there, Rick was told to sell drugs to appear more legit to the streets. A year and a couple of bad incidences later, the cops had to get who they could get and let Rick go. The story should have ended there, but we’re talking about a kid that was exposed to a wealthy lifestyle suddenly thrown back into the poor house. The rest of the story was inevitable. Rick convinces his father, who also had a taste of the rich life, to let him handle everything since he knew all the key players. No surprises here, it worked, and life was good until it wasn’t. Rick had one kilo too many, and the FBI still needed a top dealer to close the case (somewhat). Rick Sr. tries to get his son a deal before the trial and more surprises, the Feds renig on their deal. Rick Jr. gets life in prison – end of the story. Just so you know, this is not a spoiler because we don’t do those. The story of White Boy Rick is a well-known criminal case because of the press, every news channel, every channel that has news, and of course, the internet. High-profile cases like the Menendez Brothers, O.J. Simpson, JonBenét Ramsey, or Tonya Harding are hard to get away from. Even if you didn’t see the initial trial on TV at the time it happened, you still knew the story. People are driven by crime stories, and if the story is based on true events, we want to see it even more. White Boy Rick is a very interesting and well-told story that forces you to empathize with its protagonist. Regardless of how you feel about the whole drug scene, what happened to Rick Wershe Jr. was just wrong on so many levels.
MEDIA
- Genre – Drama
- Street date
- Digital – December 11th 2018
- DVD/Blu-Ray – December 25th 2018
- Video – 1080p
- Screen size – 2.39:1
- Sound – English DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1, English Dolby Digital 5.1,
- French: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
- Subtitles – English, Spanish, French, English SDH
Extras:
- 6 Deleted Scenes
- Featurettes:
- “The Unknown True Story of Rick Wershe Jr.”
- “The Three Tribes of Detroit: The Cast”
- “The Making of White Boy Rick”
- Feature Trivia Track