What’s most surprising about Rick Famuyiwa’s “Dope” is that it manages to surprise at all.
On the surface, the film, featured at Sundance and Cannes, doesn’t have a particularly new storyline.
Malcolm (Shameik Moore) is, as Forest Whitaker’s voice-over narration explains, a geek. He’s just surviving his time in the Bottoms, his neighborhood in Inglewood, Calif., obsessing about ’90s hip-hop with his friends Jib (Tony Revolori) and Diggy (Kiersey Clemons) while planning his escape to Harvard.
Starring: Shameik Moore, Tony Revolori, Kiersey Clemons.
Rating: R for language, drug content, sexuality/nudity, and some violence, all involving teens.
Through an unlucky chain of events, he ends up with a backpack full of MDMA (aka Ecstasy or Molly) that he needs to sell if he wants to get into his dream school.
“Dope” is a little bit about technology, a little bit about race, a little bit about being a geek and a little bit about college admissions. But mostly, it’s about perception.
What’s impressive about “Dope” is that every theme works towards this tension between what people perceive to be true and what is tangibly true. It starts from Malcolm’s opening line, where he tells his mother that “money as we know it is dead” and that Bitcoins are the way of the future. The concept of the Bitcoin relies on people’s perceived notions of value, because the currency exists only online.
Preconceived notions are key to both Malcolm’s successes and stumbles as a geeky drug dealer. In his first experiences, he attempts to use the lingo, catching himself in extended analogies about sandwiches and Amazon that cause more confusion than security.
The series of scenes in which Malcolm sneaks his drug supply into his school illustrate how perceptions help him succeed. He walks through a beeping alarm system and past a barking drug dog, only to have the security guard assume the machine is broken and the dog is misbehaving rather than Malcolm is smuggling in drugs. Malcolm, his status as a geek cemented in everyone’s mind, manages to sneak past the security systems several times.
The turning point comes in a confrontation with a faux designer bag maker, who will exchange Malcolm’s Bitcoins for cash only after Malcolm determines which bag is real and which is fake. Even though Malcolm still has a way to go before everything calms down, from this point on it’s clear he has more control than anyone thought.
Mr. Moore is impressive as Malcolm, crossing the line between optimistic geek and desperate dealer with skill. But if rapper A$AP Rocky were given more screen time, he would steal the show. He plays Dom, the drug dealing tough guy who still needs Malcolm to act as a messenger to his love interest, Nakia (Zoe Kravitz).
Mr. Famuyiwa weaves new technology into his film deftly, with a dealer tracking Malcolm via the Find my iPhone app, a montage of YouTube videos and Vines chronicling Malcolm’s successful rise and, of course, the prominent role of the Bitcoin. Malcolm uses Bitcoins as an untraceable method of payment to sell his MDMA and his comfort with technology is the key to the hopeful ending of the movie.
The use of technology does not just matter in the film. If Bitcoins sound appealing, “Dope” is the first movie to accept them as payment. They can be used to buy tickets at MovieTickets.com.
Caelin Miltko: cmiltko@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1707 or on Twitter @caelin_miltko.
First Published: June 19, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
