Compliance

As hard as it will be to believe, this film is very closely based on a real event. A man saying he is a police officer calls a fast food restaurant and gets one of the cashiers brought into the back room by her manager. She is accused of theft and the officer needs the manager to hold her in the room until he can get there. He also needs her to check her purse. And take her phone. And search her pockets. The manager complies and one step at a time things get terribly worse for everyone.

This film had potential. The title suggests that we are looking at the idea of compliance with authority figures and, in order to do that, we will use a real situation to investigation why this occurs. Sadly the film doesn't do any of this and instead simply plays out the real incident without much intelligent to say about it other than telling us it happened. There isn't even discussion after the fact because the ending is spent tying up the mystery (such as it is) in a way that doesn't satisfy and seems tacked on. This lack of insight or commentary is a problem but we are still left with a recreation of sorts – and this is at least delivered with a bit of a sense of tension at first. I say at first not because it flops in the second half but because for it this was replaced by something else – a feeling of the film putting me in the same place as the prank caller, and not in a meaningful way.

The film pushes the sexual material on us in a way it didn't need to. The lead girl is not plain, but blonde with a great figure and the camera doesn't shame away from letting us see it. Nor does it let her break down as the detective reviewing the video at the end of the film tells us she did (crying and begging), instead it keeps her together so that the viewer doesn't feel pushed away by her raw and shredded emotions. It is a very odd series of decisions and I would like to think they were not deliberate but it is difficult when they line up so effectively. The cast mostly do not explore their situations or reasons and, although they follow events, none of them really gave me much beyond what was on the page.

The film does deliver the real events pretty straight but I wondered why it didn't seem to add much to them. There is nothing really in the way of insight or commentary here – the plot plays out and then ends. While doing it though, the film also seems to enjoy the nudity and the sexuality of the lead actress and prevents her from breaking down while also giving her breasts and body plenty of direct line of sight. The film already felt empty and like a missed opportunity – but this just added tawdry to the list.

This movie is simply unbearable to watch. Yes, it is well made and has great acting. But whats infuriating is that it highlights how truly stupid and uneducated most Americans are. Yes, I understand given the notion of authority, people will listen to what they are told, but these people act like they have never heard of due process of law, innocent until proved guilty, asking for an attorney to be present or even asking for a policeman's badge number when he demands strange things. Only at a fast food restaurant, staffed by the most uneducated idiots could something like this occur. Or rather, I would like to think so. It seems as if the caller banks of what the people may have seen in TV shows to get them to follow his orders, but likewise, wouldn't TV at least remind people that officers don't strip search and spank people over like 40 missing dollars? The moral of the story is to stay in school and know your rights. Or you might wind up like these morons someday.

As a History Teacher of High School Students I am saddened by the lack of basic civic knowledge not afforded to the characters in this film and subsequently the real people who they portrayed. Ignorance is so depressing. Also this situation reminds us the the famous Stanford Prison Experiment and Milgrim Experiments of the 1960's, how easy it can be for authority figures to take control of unsuspecting or passive individuals. This film is important to see and the graphic nature is vital to its message. Look what the citizens of Germany allowed to happen the the 1930's and the tragedy of the followers of Jim Jones to name a few examples.

"Compliance" is a film that is painfully difficult to watch at times, because of the nature of what we see and knowing it's all true. The initial reaction is to scoff at what takes place on screen, because it's so preposterous. It's hard to believe people wouldn't wake up sooner and realize what was going on or even have a basic understanding of the law and procedure. But, basic research shows it is all true. The fact this could happen is a testament to the gullibility of the American public, and that's the most painful part of all.

I was scam-called by someone pretending to be a cop once. He claimed my wife had skipped jury duty. It was quite convincing for about 10 minutes, and then I realized what he was asking me to do made no sense, so I told him they'd just have to come and put my wife in jail, as he had threatened to do. At that point he became angry and revealed himself for the scammer he was.

The point is, any one of even slightly below average intelligence would have questioned this 'cop' well before things got to where they did. Everyone involved in the incident was a complete moron. That being said, that's not on the actors and filmmakers, as they were just portraying what supposedly happened, and I think they did it well. But you will not be able to watch this without getting extremely ticked, especially at the manager.