Dickweed makes it’s debut at SXSW and it is a wild ride. This true crime documentary is hard to believe that it is in fact real. Directed by Jonathan Ignatius Green with Ronald Douglass, John Fantasia, Rizzy Fuentes, Jerry Gregorio, is an international man hunt where two people got kidnapped. One man lost his dick. No-one got any money. This heist-gone-horribly-wrong led one Newport Beach detective on an international manhunt for the most twisted criminal he’d ever hunted.
In 2012 weed dispensary owner Michael and his roommate Mary were kidnapped out of their home and driven out into the middle of the desert. There the kidnappers demanded that Michael give them a million dollars he had hidden in the desert. The only problem, Michael didn’t know who these men were and he didn’t have a million dollars stored away anywhere. They zip tie him, blindfold him, torture and threat to cut off his penis. When Michael is unable to give them the money he doesn’t have, they make good on that promise cutting off his penis and throwing it away leaving him and Mary in the desert to fend for themselves.
As a lover of true crime and bizarre stories, Dickweed checks all of the boxes. The story is compelling, the crime is insane and the interviews with those involved are compelling. I found myself saying out loud to know one more than once, “Are you kidding me?” This story is hard to believe and as it plays out it’s hard to imagine that there are people out there in the world willing to go to such extremes on little to no information.
Dickweed plays out in what feels like two acts. The first, man getting kidnapped over an innocent joke he made and penis amputation, The second, an international manhunt that led them to Hossein Nayeri. That’s when things get wilder than the crime itself. The juxtaposition of interviews between Michael and Mary telling a story of literally fighting for their lives to interviews with Nayeri, arrogant and and crying because he was betrayed and caught is jarring. It’s hard to feel sorry for someone that could be absolutely barbaric based on a hunch with little regard for human life. Listening to the detectives talk about how they caught Nayeri is one of the best parts. It was a multiyear, multi country operation that eventually paid off. The reenactments are well done and don’t take you out of the story like some can. The shadowy dramatic depictions help enhance the interviews.
If you are a true crime fan that loves bizarre stories Dickweed is definitely for you. It’s hard to believe it’s a documentary but it is.
