Movie Review - Compliance

Compliance (2012)

Starring Ann Dowd, Dreama Walker, and Pat Healy

Directed by Craig Zobel

When you were little, everyone was told the line "Just because your friends jumped off the bridge doesn't mean you should, too."  We're told that because we need to be able to understand that we need to think for ourselves and just because someone tells us to do something doesn't mean we should toe that line.  As we get older, maybe we take a psychology class and learn about the Milgram experiment in which a Yale professor set up a test in which an authority figure asked participants to perform an act that went against their personal morals and consciences.  The test involving electric shock had over half of the participants giving the maximum voltage of electricity to test subjects (who were actually actors) despite the fact that many of these participants knew what they were doing was not humane.

It's a Milgram-type experiment at work in Compliance which is based on an amazingly disturbing true story.  I will admit that as Compliance progressed, I couldn't believe what I was seeing actually occurred, but after doing a bit of research, it turns out that all of the disgustingly inhumane stuff enacted onscreen truly happened which makes the film even more disquieting.

Sandra (Ann Dowd) is the forty-something manager of a Chick-Wich fast food restaurant and Becky (Dreama Walker) is a teen who works the register.  On a busy Friday evening, Sandra receives a phone call from an Officer Daniels (Pat Healy) stating that a woman has arrived at the police station claiming that Becky stole money from her purse while at the restaurant.  Daniels asks Sandra to take Becky into an office and begin questioning her about the stolen money which Becky vehemently denies stealing.  As time wears on, Daniels begins to ask Sandra and others to perform increasingly more disturbing acts to Becky.

Rather surprisingly, about halfway through director and screenwriter Craig Zobel shows us in the audience that Officer Daniels is in fact not a police officer at all, but a mild-mannered guy who just happened to stop into the Chick-Wich for an early dinner and decided to play a heinous prank for reasons that are never quite explained.  We in the audience would like to think that we would never succumb to the seemingly ridiculous requests of a man posing as a cop, but this does raise the question of how far would we go if someone in authority asks us to do something that makes us uncomfortable.

Compliance gives us quite an interesting premise that I'm not quite sure can sustain itself over even as short a movie as this (which clocks in at under ninety minutes).  While both Ann Dowd and Dreama Walker give nice performances, they're stuck doing essentially the same things the whole time (albeit in increasingly disturbing circumstances).  Dowd was actually garnering some awards buzz this season and while she was fine, I don't think her performance was as nuanced as everyone building that buzz believed (which was not the fault of Dowd, but of the role itself).  The film is good and worth seeing, but it admittedly wears a little thin.

The RyMickey Rating:  B-

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