There is an old saying that truth is stranger than fiction.  The movie Compliance exemplifies that principle. Were we not assured at the beginning of the movie that it was based on true events, we would have lost all patience halfway through, thinking the whole thing to be preposterous.  The names have been changed, of course, including that of the fast-food restaurant where the story mostly takes place.

It is a hectic Friday, and Sandra (Ann Dowd), the manager of ChickWich, is under a lot of stress because someone forgot to close the freezer door and the bacon got spoiled, although she did manage to get a replacement shipment.  Moreover, they are shorthanded because one of her employees is sick.  And she tells everyone that a franchise quality-control person, a secret shopper, may be coming by that day, so everyone will need to be on his best behavior.  This mention of a secret shopper introduces the idea of someone pretending to be something he is not.

Shortly after they open for business, Sandra gets a phone call from a man claiming to be Officer Daniels.  He says that one of her employees stole money from the purse of one of the customers, and they have her doing so on a surveillance tape.  He describes her, and Sandra realizes that he is talking about Becky (Dreama Walker), a pretty, petite blonde.

Daniels gives an excuse as to why he cannot come to the restaurant just then to arrest Becky, so he says Sandra will need to check Becky’s pockets for the money.  It seems like a small request, so Sandra takes Becky into the back to do just that.  No money.

Little by little, Daniels says more investigating will be needed.  As this goes on, Sandra is having to run back out front from time to time to deal with situations, and she asks various employees to go back with Becky, all of whom are disturbed by the situation.  Becky is told to remove all her clothes, including her underwear.

When an employee named Kevin is asked to be with Becky, he is appalled. Because he is her friend, he refuses to be a part of it, even though he believes, as does everyone else, that Daniels is really a policeman.  He leaves the room.

By this point in the movie, we see where the phone call is coming from.  It appears to be in a room where this Daniels is able to fix himself a sandwich. And yet, it doesn’t seem to be his house because later in the movie, he arrives home and talks to his daughter, a little girl.  My guess is that he is calling from his garage, which he has fixed up to be his man cave, while his wife is at work, and his daughter is in daycare.

However, very early in the movie, we see Daniels putting two quarters into a payphone.  Speaking into the phone, he says, “Listen.  Listen to me.”  Then he yells, “Sir!” followed by the word “sir” again, only much quieter.  This is before he calls Sandra at ChickWich, and when he does call her, he is calling on a prepaid cellphone.  So, I don’t understand this scene at the payphone.  If anyone can make sense of it, let me know.

Anyway, Sandra is a homely, middle-aged woman, apparently in her fifties. She has a boyfriend named Van, whom she says will soon be asking her to marry him, although we have doubts about that.  She asks Van to come over and help watch Becky until the police are able to come to the restaurant.

Now comes the part where we really needed to know that this was based on a true story in order to accept what happens.  When Van gets on the phone, Daniels tells him to have Becky do jumping jacks while naked to make whatever she has hidden inside her drop out.  Nothing does.  Then Daniels tells Becky that she has been bad and needs punishment, and he tells Van to give her a good spanking.  So, Becky puts her naked body across Van’s lap, and per Daniels’ instructions, Van gives her a long, hard spanking. And then, because Van has been so cooperative, Daniels tells him that it is time for Becky to do something nice for him.

Oh, no!  Not that!

Oh, yes.  In the next scene, we see Becky, still completely naked, on her knees, performing fellatio on Van.  Van feels guilty, but only after he has reached the good part.  Then he leaves.

Throughout the movie, we have been waiting for an emperor-has-no-clothes moment, which, now that I think about it, is another story in which someone is tricked into being naked in front of others. It happens when Harold, the custodian, shows up.  Sandra asks him to go to the back where Becky is, handing him the phone. Daniels starts telling Harold he will need to do an invasive cavity search.

Harold goes back out front and tells Sandra that the guy on the phone is not a policeman, and the whole scam falls apart. The real police figure out who Daniels is, and he is arrested.  Sandra breaks up with Van.  She loses her job. Becky is advised not to bother suing Sandra, now an unemployed, former fast-food worker, but rather to sue the ChickWich corporation for being remiss in not warning employees about such fraudulent phone calls.  (At the end of the movie, we are told that there have been seventy such phone calls across thirty states.)

So, why did all this happen to Becky?  The answer is something I have commented on in previous reviews of other movies, and it intrigues me so much that I must mention it again, begging the reader’s indulgence if he has heard me go on about this before.  It is a dramatic principle that a small sin must be punished severely.

At the beginning of the movie, when Becky first arrives at ChickWich and parks her car, Kevin comes up to her and starts kidding her about parking close to the front door, an area that is supposed to be reserved for customers, playfully saying he’s going to tell Sandra on her.  Where Becky has parked is indeed close to the door, and this is the sin for which Becky is punished.

Later in the movie, after Becky has removed all her clothes, Daniels tells Sandra to take the clothes to her car, put them in the front seat, and leave the door unlocked so that the police can pick them up later for closer inspection. We see Sandra walking all the way to her car, the area where employees are supposed to park.  The scene could have been shortened or even left out completely, but the movie deliberately rubs it in as to how far Sandra has to walk.

Here are some other movies exemplifying this principle.  First, there is Storm Warning (1950), in which a woman ends up being whipped by the Ku Klux Klan because she took little advantages of her good-natured colleague.  Then there is Colossus:  The Forbin Project (1970), in which a man ends up being enslaved by his supercomputer because he stole an ashtray from the White House as a souvenir.  And then there is Rosemary’s Baby (1968), in which a woman gets her husband to lie to their landlady in order to break their lease, and as a result, she ends up being raped by Satan and having to give birth to the Antichrist.  This principle has been around for a long time.  For example, in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the title character is punished with death because he hesitated.

In the true story on which this movie was based, on the other hand, the man corresponding to Daniels was acquitted for lack of evidence.

And so it is that there are two kinds of karma, one for nice people like Becky, who are punished severely for their peccadillos, and one for evil people like Daniels, who commit terrible crimes and get off easy.