White Boy Rick

It's the 1980s, and the nationwide crack epidemic is at its height in the rough-and-tumble neighborhoods of Detroit. For 14-year-old Rick (Merritt), every possible direction that his life could take looks like a dead end. His mother walked out on the family long ago, his sister (Powley) is an addict who has run away with her boyfriend, and his father, Rick Sr. (McConaughey), buys and sells guns from their run-down home while dreaming of starting a chain of video stores. When the FBI approaches Rick, hoping to recruit him as an informant to help fight the war on drugs, he leaps at the opportunity to make some money and hopefully find a way out of his directionless circumstances. As the FBI's youngest-ever informant, he joins a local gang so that he can feed information about their activities to his handlers, but it doesn't take long for him to really start embracing the criminal lifestyle. Seeing the income as a way to get his family out of its hole, he begins selling drugs, at first as part of his cover but more and more as a way of raking in the cash. The money and the exciting new lifestyle can't solve all of his problems, however, and as his time as an informant drags on, he finds himself caught up in violent confrontations, and he fathers a child before he's even old enough to vote. With the FBI higher-ups questioning the decisions of his handlers and worrying about the implications and morality of recruiting a minor to do their dirty work, Rick may soon find himself cut off from their support, leaving his struggling family members and the gang that's come to trust him as the only adults in his life. This film is based on a true story.

Director: Yann Demange. Stars: Richie Merritt, Matthew McConaughey, Bel Powley, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Brian Tyree Henry, Rory Cochrane, RJ Cyler, Jonathan Majors, Eddie Marsan, Taylour Paige, Bruce Dern, Piper Laurie. 2018. 111 min. Crime.