Review of Compliance (2012) by Kent D — 06 May 2014

Wow. It's been a long while since I've seen something so tense and unsettling, made even moreso by the fact it's based on true events from the US, and which could easily have become exploitative if not handled so well by director Craig Zobel.

A fast food manager receives a call from a 'police officer' asking her to detain an employee accused of stealing from a customer. The overworked 'police' can't get there yet so ask the manager to investigate this employee in increasingly violative ways.

This caused controversy at Sundance with people walking out, or berating the director and cast, odd (but understandable) for a movie with so little shown on screen. Anything that inspires that kind of reaction, and any subsequent discussion, is a good thing in my book.

Zobel stops short of calling people stupid (I wouldn't; they are, incredibly sometimes - why none of these people simply removed themselves from the situation, became suspect at some of the insane questions, or demanded proof of this guy's identity etc, is mind-boggling), so rather turned it into a question of what in human nature could cause this to happen.

I was reminded of the Milgram experiments from the 60s (and an episode of Law and Order featured a similar situation, with Robin Williams as the caller named 'Mr Milgram'), and this serves as a great example of why I think philosophy, logic, and critical thinking should be essential subjects in school, to breed a healthy sceptical attidude. Scepticism is intellectual armour, allowing a person who can think critically to avoid being led down the garden path, be it by hoax callers, or psychics, clairvoyants, peddlers of pseudoscientific alternative medicine, etc etc. One would hope that could prevent things like this from happening, or at least reduce their incidence or effectiveness.

Highly recommended.