What’s being reviewed?
What is it ?
A movie made in 2012.
What’s it about?
Based on a true story – or more accurately many true stories – Compliance is about a hoax phone call made to a fast food joint. The caller pretends to be a police officer and forces Sandra, the manager of the story to detain and strip search Becky, a pretty, blonde employee who works behind the counter. ‘Officer Daniels’ says Becky stole money from a customer and is being investigated for other crimes. He tells Becky she can either be stripped and searched in the back office of the restaurant or be taken to the police cells and locked up for the night. Later when the restaurant gets busy, Officer Daniels suggests that Sandra put a male in charge of watching over Becky, now naked, except for an apron…
If you only know one thing…
As unbelievable as it sounds, this film is an accurate depiction of real events at a McDonald’s in Mt Washington, Kentucky in 2004. It is one of about 70 hoax calls made across the USA where the caller duped managers of fast food outlets into strip-searching, humiliating and sexually abusing customers and staff. The caller was thought to be a 38-year-old prison warden, who was brought to trial but found not guilty by a jury due to lack of direct evidence. The caller used a disposable mobile phone and a pre-paid call card.
Is it any good?
Yes,I found it utterly engrossing and very disturbing. The acting is excellent and needs to be for the audience to accept the unlikely series of events that unfold. The acting is particularly good from Ann Dowd, who plays the do-good manager Sandra, Dreama Walker as Becky and Pat Healy as the creepy Officer Daniels.
What I liked most about it?
It’s voyeuristic quality, where it draws the viewer in and makes them almost complicit in the vile acts. It also makes you question, how you would behave in the same situation, from each character’s point of view. You want to watch and turn away. I also like the setting. The film is set almost entirely in a fast food restaurant called ChickWich on a snow winters day. The diabolical deeds go on in the back office while customers eat burgers and chips, drink sodas and socialise.
Famed film critic, Roger Ebert liked the film: “There is the uncomfortable realization that if a TSA agent (the person who screens you at a US airport) wanted to strip-search us at an airport, we might agree. Or would we? Would you?”
An interesting thing to ponder:
While you may balk at how easily Sandra, the store manager was sucked into the hoax or be disgusted at how Van, Sandra’s boyfriend followed orders, a famous 1960s experiment by behavioral scientist Stanley Milgram found that subjects would administer potentially lethal – so they believed – electric shocks to others even though they could hear their screams and pleadings through the wall. They did so because Milgram, dressed in a white laboratory coat, stethoscope and clipboard, represented authority and most test subjects simply obeyed his orders.
How much time do you have to invest?
Compliance is just over an hour and twenty minutes long.
How do I watch to it?
If you’re living in Australia, you can watch Compliance for free on SBS on Demand (as of February 2015). Otherwise, search for it online. Here’s the official website.
Can you recommend something similar?
Happiness, a film made in 1998 by Todd Solondz filled with weirdos and perverts, plus a great performance by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Freshlyworded 