Review of Compliance (2012) by Mike C — 25 Feb 2013

Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. The more I read about this movie and story, the more I love it. It's insane: a prank phone call to a fast-food joint ultimately ends in rape. The movie more-or-less ends there, but evidently, the real story includes a big settlement for the manager who really fucked up.

It's a very slow movie. Time calls it the "the year's squirmiest movie," and the New York Post gave it its highest rating, four stars, calling it "depressing, infuriating - and important." It is all those things. As you watch, you cannot believe that people would be so stupid. Literally a hundred times, this thing could have ended before reaching, uh hem, its climax. That said, it really did happen in McDonalds in 2004. Supposedly, the cop investigating in the movie asked, "What did they put in that chicken that made everybody lose their (expletive) minds?" He also says has another one liner that perfectly frames the movie: yes, this is the dumbest thing imaginable, but yes, it's happened several times.

I was intrigued by the compliance aspect. As the title suggests, the compliance/conformity angle plays a huge role in the movie. The caller is able to control his subject by expressing authority and having them call him sir, etc. He uses positive reinforcement to get certain things. It's just textbook psychology. And as the Milgram conformity studies have proved, it's not crazy to think people will do bad things when they think they are dealing with an authority figure.

Not even sure how I found out about this movie. So I barely knew anything about it going in. Thought the manager was more Oscar worthy than the mother in Silver Linings, etc. I feel like I stumbled onto a great piece of film making merely because someone found an outrageous story and translated it to the screen very well.