Drugs and despair in the streets of Detroit

Director Yann Demange grounds White Boy Rick in grim realism.

Illegal gun sales, drugs, gangs, corruption, and injustice.

You can tell from this list, and I've abbreviated it, that the new movie White Boy Rick spends little time traversing feel-good turf. Based on a true story, White Boy Rick plunges into Detroit's economic decay during the free-wheeling 1980s.

White Boy Rick focuses on three tumultuous years in the life of Rick Wershe Jr. (Richie Merritt) as he moves from a being a wayward 14-year-old with a father (Matthew McConaughey) who traffics in illegal guns to a cocaine peddler to an FBI informant and, finally, to his inevitable identity: prisoner.

In telling Rick's story, director Yann Demange pushes McConaughey into more of a supporting role than you might expect. This time, McConaughey plays a dirtbag hustler with a difference. Richard Wershe Sr. lacks the charm of some of the rogues McConaughey previously has played.

Aware of his mammoth failures as a father, Richard knows he has nothing to give his son, but the tricks of an illegal trade. McConaughey's performance hints at a sad self-awareness that borders on the tragic.

As Demange tells Rick's story, the movie evokes the ragged, jittery style of the '70s, chopping its way through lives that would be utterly empty if not for trouble.

Early on, Ricky falls in with a group of black drug dealers led by Johnny Curry (a quietly scary Jonathan Majors). Johnny's younger brother Boo (RJ Cyler), Ricky's only real friend, brings Ricky into a gang in which he's the only white guy.

For a time, it's all fun and games as Ricky finds friends and family-like ties among a group of black men who have connections to City Hall. Finally, Rick belongs to something -- or thinks he does.

Meanwhile -- and White Boy Rick is a movie of many "meanwhiles" -- Rick's sister Dawn (Bel Powley) wallows in a drug-addicted life that brings her to the edge of physical ruin. Ravaged by crack, her face seems to be rotting right along with Detroit's declining industrial landscape.

Ricky also draws the attention of two FBI agents (Jennifer Jason Leigh and Rory Cochrane) who want Ricky to help them bring Johnny down. Ricky's given an impossible choice: Either he informs for the FBI or the FBI will shut down his father's illegal gun business. Family ties win out.

Some of the movie's scenes are given a humorous twist -- few greater than the movie's prologue which finds father and son arriving home from a successful buy at a gun show trying to convince the drug-addicted Dawn to accompany them for frozen custard, a ludicrous and inevitably futile stab at familial normalcy.

But harsh realities overshadow humor, even when it comes from Ricky's grandparents (Bruce Dern and Piper Laurie). Grandma keeps a pistol in her oven.

Merritt, who has no previous acting experience, gives a raw, natural performance as a kid who never entirely sells out his innocence. When Rick begs his father to join him in the drug business, he's not so much acting the thug as pleading for the life of his family and the ability to sustain it the only way he knows.

White Boy Rick isn't a perfect movie, perhaps because it never entirely convinces us that there's anything major to be gained from watching these characters fall prey to their devastated environment. Still, there's something to be said for movies that insist on shining realistic light on society's margins.

White Boy Rick makes a last-minute attempt to criticize the justice system that ultimately betrays Ricky, but the feeling one draws from the movie has less to do with rage at judicial inequity than with the bone-deep despair that stems from watching so many lives swirl desperately before going down the drain.

''71' immerses us in chaos in Belfast

A brutally involving look at a British soldier stranded behind enemy lines.

Getting caught behind enemy lines probably qualifies as a soldier's worst nightmare, particularly if that soldier happens to be alone.

That's exactly what happens to Private Gary Hook (Jack O'Connell) in the gripping, war-torn '71, a hyper-agitated helping of cinema set in Belfast during the tumultuous period of "the troubles."

Belfast is not a place Hook or anyone else wants to be with bullets flying and kids throwing bags of feces at the British troops, who are supposed be serving as peacekeepers.

The British soldiers aren't helped by a nervous commanding officer (Sam Reid) who leaves his troops ill-equipped to deal with the chaotic episode in which Hook is separated from his fellow soldiers.

O'Connell (Starred Up and Unbroken) belongs at the forefront of any list of important young British actors. Totally at home in a movie that relies on visceral charge, O'Connell embodies all of Hook's resourcefulness, panic and vulnerability. He gives a jolting, live-wire of a performance.

First-time director Yann Demange brings an immersive quality to this story of a British soldier on the run in a political environment so complex it can't help but erupt into chaos.

Protestants are battling with Catholics and the British soldiers are thrown into the middle of all this, along with unscrupulous undercover agents who try to play both sides from what appears to be a non-existent middle.

Demange seems less interested in sorting out political issues than in making a movie in which Private Hook must run for his life, a breathless flight full of convincingly lethal possibilities.

Hook -- a product of British foster homes -- is not fighting for a cause: He's simply trying to survive, and the various Irish factions don't pose the only threat to him.

At various points, Hook receives help from the locals, notably when a father and daughter (Richard Dormer and Charlie Murphy) provide him with shelter. But for Hook, there's no real comfort: Any situation can turn volatile in an instant.

Screenwriter Gregory Burke doesn't spell out Hook's background, but it's safe to assume that he joined the Army because he had few other options. Early on, we learn that Hook's younger brother (Harry Verity) is stuck in the same children's home that presumably spawned Hook.

After an institutionalized upbringing of extreme indifference, the army probably looked like a pretty good deal.

The point here is that soldiers such as Hook quickly become pawns in a game that they don't really understand -- not that anyone else understands it, either. Hook is as much a victim as he is peacekeeper.

We emerge from this movie in somewhat the same battered state as Hooks: We may not totally comprehend what happened, but we sure as hell don't want to re-visit this nightmare again.

That's probably a good thing: Movies such as '71 give us a taste -- cautionary, one hopes -- of how it feels to be tossed into a world in which there are no safe havens.