Review of Rick (2003) by Edward D — 13 May 2005

"You kill me! You craaack me uuuup!" screams Rick Olette (Bill Pullman), a fortyish Wall Street executive and corporate monster created by Daniel Handler (AKA Lemony Snicket), who wrote the script for [i]Rick[/i]. Olette's raucous flattery is intended for Duke, the young CEO for whom Rick acts as court jester.

Handler has grafted twenty-first century flesh onto the bones of Rigoletto, the title character of the Verdi opera upon which the film is based. Duke, played by Aaron Stanford ("Tadpole"), is a slimy, jellybean-popping SOB in his mid-twenties, whose "work" appears to consist of online sports betting and sex-chat.

Rick and Duke work at Image, a corporation with no discernible product besides nastiness and cynicism. Rick's life has taken a tragic turn, and he has become the Organization Man from Hades, with a job that consists mainly of pandering to the preadolescent Duke's basest instincts and making him laugh. The two bet on sports, pay off in booze, and shout, shout, and shout some more. But it's not an equal battle. Duke gets to pelt Rick with jellybeans and threaten him with anal penetration, death, and firing. He humiliates him by forcing him to crawl under a desk on his hands and knees. Rick puts on a hail-fellow face, but his "You craaack me uuup!", as he emerges from beneath the furniture, is a barely-suppressed cry of pain and anger.

Rick says, at one point, that he used to be a good person, but he's turned into a blue-ribbon tubesteak. He interviews a young woman, Michelle (Sandra Oh), for a job as his assistant, and badgers, tortures, and humiliates her. The interview scene is intercut with Rick and Duke behaving like fifth-graders on a school bus, riffing raucously on Rick's embellishment of his vicious, sexist, and racist evisceration of Michelle.

Rick has a beautiful teenage daughter, Eve (Agnes Bruckner), who likes erotic webchat. Their relationship has vaguely incestuous overtones, and Rick soon finds himself having to protect her from his predatory boss. Life becomes even more complicated for Rick when he encounters a business-school classmate, Buck (Dylan Baker), a Mephistophelian character whose consulting firm "takes it to the next level". He offers his services to Rick, and the intrigue builds as Rick learns exactly what the "next level" is and takes his hatred for Duke there.

The film was directed by first-timer Curtiss Clayton, the editor of Gus Van Sant's [i]Drugstore Cowboy [/i]and [i]My Own Private Idaho[/i]. [i]Rick [/i]has a distinctly stylized look. There are few ground-level exteriors, the office spaces are claustrophobic, and the outside world is represented by upward-thrusting temples of capitalism, reminiscent of the photographs of Thirties' lower Manhattan by Berenice Abbott. It's a cold and barren cityscape reflective of a faceless, amoral corporate world.

The story takes place at Christmastime, and the soundtrack contains soft, wistful, almost dirgelike versions of holiday melodies. Played on the accordion, they fit the dark, portentous tonality of the film.

Pullman delivers a highly-nuanced, effective performance as a man skilled at inflicting psychic pain while retaining a hint of vulnerability. The counterpoint between Rick's soft, somewhat benevolent face and the viciousness he is capable of effectively mirrors the two sides of big business.

This is not a film likely to have mass appeal, but is worth seeing nonetheless. It is quirky, edgy and dark, and snarkily funny at times. Wrongs, for the most part, are not righted, and there is no one to root for.

[i]Rick[/i] retains much of the tragic flavor of the opera on which it is based, while embodying the more contemporary, noirish vision of a writer well-known for subjecting his characters to a series of unfortunate events. And events don't get much more unfortunate than those depicted in this finely-crafted, highly original film.

[color=#3399ff][b]My rating:[/b] **** [b]HEALTHY[/b][/color].

[b][color=#3399ff]Next up: [i]CRASH[/i][/color][/b].