White Boy

Shawn Rech's 2017 documentary tells the story of Richard Wershe Jr., known in Detroit as White Boy Rick. Wershe began informing for the FBI at fourteen, was arrested at seventeen on a non-violent drug charge, and received a life sentence under Michigan's mandatory sentencing law of the time. The documentary is a record of a child being used by law enforcement and then abandoned. Its strength is dismantling the legend: the white teenager the newspapers presented as a drug kingpin was in fact a boy directed by adults. The film proceeds through archive footage and testimony and avoids dramatic reconstruction. Its weakness is a stance close to advocacy; the question of Wershe's responsibility for his own actions is not opened far enough. Who it's for: viewers interested in the American criminal justice system, mandatory sentencing laws and 1980s Detroit. Who it's not for: anyone wanting a documentary that keeps critical distance from its subject, or avoiding narratives of drugs and crime.