Sundance 2022: 2nd Chance

Richard Davis and his Mercedes Benz (Sundance Film Festival)

Documentaries inevitably absorb and reflect the nature of their subjects. Richard Davis, inventor of the bulletproof vest and long-time CEO of body armor company Second Chance, is a bloviating, self-important goon with little in the way of redeemable features. As such, Ramin Bahrani's new film, "2nd Chance," which follows Davis' life, is equal parts inconsistent, uninteresting, and (at times) outright agitating. Early on in the film Bahrani explains via narration that he viewed Davis as an analogue to the United States. Davis is equal parts absurd and dangerous, obsessive in his desire to help specific others while simultaneously causing harm time and time again. Perhaps that pitch, his motivation for making the film in the first place, is the exact reason I found it so exhausting and unnecessary.

Davis is, at most, a shade removed from other contemporary American grifters. From Ray Kroc to Donald Trump to David Siegel, they all operate in vaguely the same way. They're single-minded in their approach, removed from the consequences of their actions, and generally larger than life. Unlike the aforementioned names, Richard Davis did not run a multibillion-dollar business. He was not the president. He did not build the largest home in America. He ran, at its height, a 50-million dollar company within a distinct niche, and were it not for the unique aesthetics of his having shot himself in the chest 192 times, I doubt this film would've been made.

Broken down into six chapters and an epilogue, Bahrani applies a very standard structure to the film: he begins at the start of Richard's career and follows it until the present day, when all of the talking-head interviews are being conducted. We open on one of the original Second Chance marketing videos. In it, Richard, bespectacled and balding in a black t-shirt, points a gun at his oversized stomach and fires a round straight into the ample padding within. All is well. Then, in the present: a modest-sized sitting room with drab furniture, wood-panel walls, and a vast array of bullets occupying every nook and cranny. Richard is the same. Just as portly, just as bald, just forty years older.

Seemingly unprovoked, he begins by arguing that body armor has been present and ongoing for 500 million years. He references fish, vines, turtle shells, and spears before tying it back to his own work in the present. Through his eyes, he's part of an infinite lineage. His work is crucial to human evolution. At first this style of speech is charming, engaging. One can understand why he succeeded as a kind of showman in the early 1970s, but as we spend more time with him the sheen wears off.

That style of speech, scattered and muddy and mumbled, drives the course of the film. Naturally, this operates in direct contrast to Bahrani's clear, chronological structure. The result is a narrative that is at once deeply conventional and frustratingly unclear. Everything is treated with the same level of importance, whether its the allegations that Davis burned down his first business (a pizza parlor) for $5,000 in insurance money or a look into the exploitation films he directed as part of his marketing campaigns.

The general gist is this: Davis claims he was inspired to create a bulletproof vest after slaying three criminals who had been robbing his pizza delivery drivers. Upon creating the vest, he marketed it extensively, sending out videos of him shooting himself to prove their usefulness. As he achieved greater success, he became a de-facto God in his small Michigan town, employing up to 80% of the residents. As he achieved greater success, he became involved in increasingly unusual scandals. Most notably, killing a man with fireworks and asking a high school boy to take responsibility for an errant bullet that ricocheted into an old woman's house, causing a heart attack. Davis didn't face true consequences for either event. Finally, a new material his company discovered proved faulty after they had sent out 100,000 vests to police departments, government agencies, and the military. That debacle cost Davis the company.

What I've just done in roughly 140 words occupies essentially the entire film. The talking head interviews are limited to Richard, his son Matt, his two ex-wives, townspeople, and his employees. Because the structure of the film is so typical (i.e., talking head, archive footage, talking head, archive footage), the actual viewing experience becomes increasingly monotonous as time goes on. Those northern Michigan interiors all blend together into a sea of green and brown. The eye can't help but defocus.

Call me cynical, but I can't bring myself to care about a small-time eccentric who doubles as a terrible person.

Bahrani does stumble into one excellent character and appropriately centers the end of the film around him. That man is Aaron Westrick, a former police officer whose life was saved by a Second Chance vest. He became deeply loyal to Richard, acting in his propaganda films and eventually coming on to work at the coming full-time for several decades. Ultimately, it was Aaron and his firm moral compass that sold Richard out. Aaron worked with the government, wore a wire, and recorded he and Richard's conversations about the 100,000 defective vests.

Simultaneously tender and firm, loyal and independent, Aaron is by far the most interesting figure in the film. In his first interview excerpt he says that putting on a Second Chance vest is like having Richard Davis' protection wrapped around you. By the end he's reckoning with a grand betrayal. It's fascinating and a rare bright spot in an otherwise rudderless film.

The film ends with an Epilogue titled, "The End of Death." As previously mentioned, Aaron's life was saved by one of Richard's vests after an assailant shot him during a B&E. Bahrani finds that man. Clifford Washington is an adjunct professor and a pastor. He speaks gently about his youth and the mistakes he made. When he and Aaron meet in an open field, they embrace and Clifford breaks down into tears as he apologizes over and over again.

The film could've ended there. It doesn't. Instead we see a grotesque old man in sunglasses and the same military green hat he's been wearing for decades. He's standing in the grass on a cloudy day. He pulls out a revolver, points it at his stomach, and fires. No bullets this time. Just the click and whistle of a moving cartridge. He fires over and over again, producing click after click. Bahrani's camera lingers, seemingly waiting for something.