Compliance

Released by: Magnolia Pictures
Released on: January 8, 2013.
Director: Craig Zobel
Cast: Dreama Walker, Ann Dowd, Pat Healy
Year: 2012
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The Movie:

Written and directed by Craig Zobel and 'based' on a true story, 2012's Compliance introduces us to Becky (Dreama Walker), a nineteen year old fast food worker who shows up for work just in time for her boss to lecture last night's crew about the foils of leaving the freezer door open. Becky's day seems average enough: she chats up shift supervisor Marti (Ashlie Atkinson) about who she's dating and has an awkward conversation with manager Sandra (Ann Dowd) about her supposed engagement, but it's about to get a whole lot weirder.

When Sandra answers the phone to find the police on the other end, the man on the end introduces himself as Officer Daniels (Pat Healy) and tells her that he's had a complaint that Becky took something out of a customer's purse. Further, he claims that one of his men was in the restaurant and saw it happen and that Sandra would be doing the police department a huge favor by helping them get the money back. Becky is hauled into the office and Sandra takes instruction from Daniels and searches her. When nothing turns up, she's asked to strip search Becky and begrudgingly she obliges. When nothing turns up, Sandra is coerced into taking Becky's clothes and leaving them outside in the car so that a cop can easily retrieve them to look for hidden pockets. All of this is going on while the restaurant is getting busier and customers are getting more irate. Eventually Sandra hands off the responsibility of monitoring poor naked Becky to a couple of other co-workers and then to her boyfriend, Evan (Bill Camp), and things go from bad to worse.

While it wouldn't necessarily be hard for a fully grown woman in a position of moderate authority such as Sandra to coerce a naí¯ve and slightly dim witted teenager like Becky into going along with this under the belief that she's acting in the greater good, Compliance takes things a little farther than that: this is a movie populated by idiots. That's not to say it couldn't happen, as apparently it did, but for an adult to willingly go along with such an unorthodox request from an unknown person on the other end of the phone seems unlikely. That Becky would barely protest such an invasion of her privacy, let alone go along with the humiliation she endures in the later part of the movie, even more so. A few co-workers raise their eyebrows when they learn what's happening in the back room but none of them really go out of their way to stop anything, at least not to any degree of effectiveness and you get the impression that all involved are simply stupid. This makes it hard to feel sorry for them. Becky obviously doesn't deserve what happens to her and for that matter neither does Sandra but just the fact that just the slightest inkling of common sense could have prevented it makes the whole thing more than a little frustrating. Additionally, the voyeuristic way in which certain key scenes are shot goes a long way towards putting the audience at center stage. When Becky's top comes off there's no attempt to hide her breasts from us, they're almost flaunted. While in one way this makes the viewer partly complicit in what's happening, it winds up feeling like cheap titillation.

The movie isn't a complete write off, however. The acting is strong across the board even when the character development is not. Dowd is completely believable as the restaurant manager who, through little snippets of dialogue here and there, obviously wants more out of life than she has and as such sees her chance to help the cops as maybe a way to get that. Walker's fine in her part, she looks right for the role and emotes as much as the story asks her to - the problems with her character are not problems with her performance. Bill Camp is decent enough as the drunken boyfriend placed into unusual circumstances without a clue as to how to properly behave and Ashlie Atkinson is likeable as the shift supervisor who fails to act to stop what she knows is wrong. The talented cast surely deserved more out of the script.

Visually things shape up well - a lot of tight close up shots keep things claustrophobic in the back room while the search is going on and then the camera opens up a bit when we leave that room, as if to give us a sense of relief. On a technical level Compliance leaves little room for complaint, making it all the more unfortunate that it's excellent premise winds up wasted.

Video/Audio/Extras:

Compliance looks good on DVD, framed at 1.78.1 and presented in anamorphic widescreen. The image is crisp and colorful when it needs to be, though with so much of the movie taking place in the back room of a fast food joint the colors don't always pop off the screen. There are no problems with dirt or debris, compression artifacts or noise reduction and the picture is stable and offers detail about as good as you can expect from standard definition.

The only audio option on the disc is an English language Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound mix, though subtitles are offered in English, English SDH and Spanish. Though not the most enveloping mix you're ever going to hear - the film is almost entirely dialogue based - surround channels do offer up some ambient noise in the restaurant scenes and occasionally spread out the score. The levels are balanced well and dialogue remains clean, clear and easy to understand.

The main extra is a ten minute interview with the film's director, Craig Zobel, who speaks about how he used different real life occurrences of situations like this to craft his story while still trying to make something cinematic and interesting to watch as a movie.

Aside from that we get a quick behind the scenes documentary made up of footage shot on set during the production, a promotional spot called AXS TV: A Look At Compliance which isn't much more than a glorified trailer, a proper trailer for the feature itself, trailers for a few unrelated Magnolia properties, menus and chapter selection.

The Final Word:

Compliance features good work from a strong cast but fails to really capitalize on its admittedly very interesting premise, instead delivering thin characters with poorly defined motivations in a situation that becomes increasingly hard to believe. Magnolia's DVD isn't jam packed with extras but has a few supplements and boasts strong audio and a nice transfer. Too bad the movie turns out to be a missed opportunity.