Within the now-obligatory opening sizzle-reel of The Actual Bling Ring, a prosecutor describes the story that we’re about to look at as ‘a f**ked up LA Greek tragedy’. I used to be hooked instantly. On this story, she says, the defendants wished to be well-known, their legal professionals wished to be well-known, and the cops concerned wished to be well-known. “It’s something that could only happen in Hollywood,” she provides wryly, solely half-registering that she, too, is on digital camera.
The three-part Netflix true crime documentary revisits the notorious serial burglaries that have been beforehand dramatised in director Sofia Coppola’s 2013 movie The Bling Ring. The movie introduced a reasonably fictionalised model of the crimes, which have been perpetrated by a gang of fame-hungry youngsters who broke into and robbed the homes of celebrities who, by way of sheer dangerous luck, discovered themselves on the peak of the Hollywood A-list in 2008. Merely a look on the checklist of their targets — Paris Hilton, Orlando Bloom, Audrina Patridge — may make you instinctively scrounge round for the BlackBerry that hasn’t been in your pocket for over a decade.
In contrast to the movie, The Actual Bling Ring ostensibly presents one thing nearer to the reality, though it has nice enjoyable pitting two members of the ‘Bling Ring’ — Nick Prugo and Alexis Neiers — towards one another. Nick and Alexis narrate conflicting variations of the occasions in their very own phrases, and episode two options an electrical scene by which they contradict one another’s claims in real-time. They aren’t in the identical room — they most likely hate one another — however that doesn’t cease the documentary from fanning the flames.
However along with these slickly edited sequences, designed purely to set tongues wagging, the sequence additionally takes the occasional stab at profundity. Whereas trying to dissect a really explicit interval within the historical past of celeb tradition, The Actual Bling Ring has the audacity to counsel that the case set the ball rolling down a path that may finish with Donald Trump being elected president.
This was the period of MySpace and BBM, of TMZ and actuality tv. Beneath the present’s shiny exterior, there’s a story concerning the class divide and upward social mobility; of fame for fame’s sake and simply how keen persons are to promote their souls for it. The ringleader Nick was a queer teen from The Valley, a suburb of Los Angeles that one smarmy actual property agent describes within the sequence because the place folks go to if they will’t afford to dwell in LA. Alexis, alternatively, was thrust right into a extremely seedy life at a really younger age by her opportunistic stage mother.
The debauchery on show, particularly within the first episode, is sort of gorgeous. Trying to ape Kim Kardashian’s path to fame, Alexis’ mom turned her right into a pinup mannequin by faking her age. At 17, Alexis was dancing bare in a Marilyn Manson music video with an eight-ball of cocaine ready for her within the greenroom. Whereas an aura of tragedy hangs over each minute of The Actual Bling Ring, Alexis’ story, which includes extreme drug habit and abuse, is sadder than Nick’s. There’s a robust sense that, along with the folks she robbed, she, too, is a sufferer. And regardless of the sobriety and stability that she has now allowed into her life, it seems that she nonetheless isn’t prepared to come back to phrases with what occurred.
However for all his seen sociopathy, Nick comes throughout as fairly easy. He shows zero regret for his actions, and from time to time, nearly seems to be reminiscing concerning the crimes like a has-been film star trying again at his glory days in showbiz. He describes the cocaine that he as soon as discovered at Paris Hilton’s home as actual ‘Scarface coke’. Later, whereas recounting the occasions main as much as one other housebreaking, he says that he made certain to be answerable for his colleges. “I was more drunk than normal, so I did a bit of coke and sobered myself up,” he says with a straight face, earlier than being hit by the absurdity of his phrases.
Nick is ‘bothered’ that Coppola’s film made Alexis out to be the ringleader, a notion that was exacerbated by Emma Watson’s casting as Alexis. From the second folks noticed Watson within the movie’s trailer, in a second that contributed to a whole technology’s coming of age and has since been immortalised in GIF type, there was little question that she was the star of the present. Besides that she wasn’t. Alexis participated in only one theft, we’re instructed.
The Actual Bling Ring doesn’t fairly glamorise its shady topics in the way in which that The Wolf of Wall Road did, however it doesn’t make any radical observations concerning the decline of tradition both. Your enjoyment of will probably be instantly proportional to your urge for food for nicely-packaged junk.
The Actual Bling Ring: Hollywood Heist
Director – Miles Blayden-Ryall
Score – 3.5/5
