A man is abducted from his home, dragged into the desert, and tortured, culminating in his captors severing his penis and dousing him in bleach. It’s quite the hook, and the stylish documentary feature DICKWEED, directed by Jonathan Ignatius Green, throws its audience right into the heart of the action of this unbelievable true story. The viewer is put in Michael’s headspace as he tries to figure out who these people are and why they are doing this to him. You are almost as confused as he was that night, and before you know it, his dick is cut off just a few minutes into the runtime. When you open with an act as horrible as that, you know you have the audience’s attention, and the question becomes where can you go from there?
In the case of DICKWEED, after the inciting incident, it becomes less about the victim and more about the detective investigating the case and the main perpetrator of the crime. At first, we hear from Michael as he speaks very frankly about his torture, but beyond the shocking description of what happened to him, the documentary also presents the viewer with haunting, real images and investigation audio of Michael immediately after the attack. DICKWEED is almost a mixed media project in this way, melding interview footage, reenactments, police cam footage, and even genuine prison escape footage all together to create the tapestry of this story. This varied presentation creates a very stylized vision, at times resembling a big budget Western or a late season episode of Breaking Bad. Additionally, existing in an era of docuseries stretching out a single story into eight or ten episodes, it is refreshing to watch a standalone documentary such as this one.
Hearing and seeing in such detail what Michael went through on that night is harrowing, but once again it is important to note that is not really where the focus of DICKWEED lies. If a viewer goes in expecting a deep dive on the graphic and lurid details of this event, they will be setting themselves up for disappointment. Instead, DICKWEED spends much of its runtime with the lead investigator on this case and even more examining the psyche of the criminal who enacted this plan. It serves more as a profile on the primary suspects and a character study on the mind behind it all. In this regard, the story evolves more into a courtroom drama. The focus on the victims is lost in favor of delving into the nitty gritty of the investigation. This may require the audience to switch gears based on how the documentary begins.
Curiosity is a powerful emotion, and once you have the knowledge of what the story of DICKWEED leads to, it’s very likely you are going to want to know exactly how things got to that point. You will share in the officers’ excitement of putting the clues together. You will be asked to excuse misappropriation of police power as a means to an end, (a very tall ask). You will feel as though you are in that courtroom, being presented the evidence and likely finding yourself in various states of awe and disgust at the sheer cockiness of our number one suspect.
DICKWEED is a well-made and clean documentary. It pulls you in, and then once it has you, takes you for a ride that may be entirely different from what you were expecting. At its worst, it feels like a bait and switch for the audience, but at its best, DICKWEED engages in inventive use of the documentary form, something that holds great value in and of itself. If you allow yourself to put the… well, dick and weed of it all on the backburner, what you have on your hands is a tight, flashy, and unexpected criminal case that is sure to keep you guessing.
Tags: Breaking Bad, Dickweed, documentary, Johnathan Ignatius Green, SXSW 2024
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