Compliance

Genre: Thriller 
90mins
Canada
Writer/Director: Craig Zobel
Cast: Ann Dowd, Dreama Walker, Pat Healy

 

Plot

The manager of a fast food restaurant receives a phone call from a prank caller who convinces her he is a police officer and that one of her employees is a thief.  He manipulates her into strip searching the employee.  During the course of the film the prankster goes on to convince various members of staff and otherwise ordinarily trustworthy individuals to abuse and humiliate the girl.  A terrifying study of oppressive corporate culture in the modern world. 

 

Review

Realistic performance from Ann Dowd (Restaurant manager Sandra) who won a National Board of Review award for Best Supporting Actress. Sandra, under pressure due to ruined bacon is about to have the worse day of her working life.  A man claiming to be a policeman calls accusing server Becky (Dreama Walker) of stealing from a customer.  Sandra brings Becky into the store room come office where Sandra is told by the caller to hold tight, as the the police aren't far away. 

He then talks her into strip searching Becky.  The conman makes it sound perfectly reasonable and also asks Sandra to call her superior (but she doesn’t get through)for confirmation that this kind of action is within company policy. Sandra crumbles and resorts to the same reasoning tactics as the prankster on Becky, and soon the young girl is down to her briefs.   

When the restaurant gets busy Sandra calls on her fiancé Van (Bill Camp) to watch the girl. The caller soon has Van under control, compelling the man to carry out seedy and revolting acts on auto pilot. 

 

By the middle of the film you think the plot is ridiculous until you remember the opening credits stated the story is based on true events.  A phone prankster used the same con for over a decade culminating in the abuse of a restaurant worker at a MacDonald’s in Kentucky 2004. 

 

The film is also based on Yale social psychologist Stanley Milgram’s experiment in obedience and authority.  The experiment has participants administering increasingly severe electric shocks (the shocks are fake so no patients are harmed) to patients.  Milgram’s conclusion, after discovering more than half of participants gave high voltage shocks even when patient’s were in extreme pain, was that participants shifted blame for the hurt they were causing to someone else, therefore relinquishing responsibility.

The film uncomfortably illuminates this lack of thought and responsibility in the fast food restaurant industry and also the insidious nature of control and authority. Following orders of superiors is in every part of our society from governments to corporate managers. 

 

Could this film have worked better as a documentary, I think so; the character of the prankster is only vaguely seen at the start and end of the film. He appears to be a family man, so more about how he came to be carrying out the pranks would have been interesting. Along with an exploration of  Milgram’s experiment and the history of corporate culture could have created a richer experience.

Still an interesting film well worth seeing.

3 out of 5 stars.