Film Review: Compliance

Director: Craig Zobel

A 2012 drama based on the true story of a prank caller pretending to be a police officer calling a fast food restaurant claiming one of their employees stole some money from a customer. It's more or less based on the worst story from this scam which happened in Mount Washington, Kentucky where an employee at a McDonalds was adjudged to have stolen but things got incredibly out of hand over the hours following.

Becky (Dreama Walker) is accused of stealing some money from a customer at the Chickwich fast food restaurant by a police man over the phone, her boss Sandra (Ann Dowd) is dealing with the complaint over the phone where the police officer requests they check all her pockets and her purse before asking the manager to strip search the employee. Sandra is unsure about this but the police officer is very convincing and charming towards her, as the restaurant gets busy she calls on other employees and her fiancee to watch over Becky and speak to the police officer where things take a turn for the worst.

Becky waits to see what the police officer wants next

The whole film flows with a wave of frustration and disgust as throughout the entire sequence we know that the man posing as Officer Daniels on the phone is in fact a prank caller. Knowing that the staff, and especially Sandra, at the fast food restaurant are being duped from the outset makes the following 90mins difficult viewing. On its release at the Sundance Film Festival it was subject to much debate and some walkouts of the first screening which was to be expected given the subject matter.

The acting within the movie is extremely impressive especially from Dreama Walker and Ann Dowd, they genuinely come across as innocent people who are coerced by the extremely manipulative prank caller. Its upon these performances that the entire movie is held together. The storyline itself seems far-fetched but is actually similar to what happened in real life, the only criticism would be that the film differs too far from the truth which is infact more thrilling and interesting than the amendments made to the plot here. Possibly more time should also have been dedicated to dealing with the aftermath between the characters but for displaying the shocking and most likely unknown events of these calls it should be lauded

2.5/4 Shocking and deeply unsettling docudrama.