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Apt For What It Is Favorite Movie Quote: "Be careful, boy; you play with fire." Now that he's has his fill, for the time being at least, of the superhero genre, director Bryan Singer returns to these roots with his new film, Valkyrie. People likely remember Singer for The Usual Suspects, The X-men films, and what I viewed as the mediocre Superman Returns, but between criminal minds and mutant rights, he carved a little slice of dark humanity with Apt Pupil. Originally published as one of four parts in the book Different Seasons along with Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, The Body, and The Breathing Method (the first of which should be recognizable while the second became Stand By Me), the apt pupil is brilliant high school valadictorian-to-be Todd Bowden (the late Brad Renfro) who has a fascination with World War II history, specifically the true and ugly details of the concentration camps. When he discovers that one of his neighbors, Arthur Denker, is really Nazi war criminal Kurt Dussander (Ian McKellen) he threatens to expose him if he does not divulge all his stories about the days that were. As the two get more intricately intertwined, a dark recess within each of them is awakened, Dussander's from a long slumber, Todd's from a place he didn't know he possessed. The hardest thing to buy in this story is that any student would recognize a Nazi war criminal - fifty years after the fact - and do anything but turn him in. This alone is cause for skepticism and, even if believable, makes Todd somewhat of a swine from the get-go. Dussander, on the other hand, is really more of the victim at this stage of his life because he'd put his past behind him only to have it dragged back to the surface of his psyche by the pestering pubecent. Todd really is the transgressor in this story and largely suffers little to no consequence. While the story has always been a bit of a stretch to me, I love the execution. McKellen is always brilliant (though often disturbing) and this is simply another of many great roles. Brad Renfro does well just to sit in the same room with someone of McKellen's talent and presence, but sometimes exceeds this in a very solid performance of a very difficult and unlikeable character. Like all of Singer's work, the mechanics are largely flawless. The shots are as dark as the recesses of Dussander's mind, and the balance of power between Todd and Dussander expertly shifts with an intoxicating display of Nazi fervor at the film's midpoint. In the end, the teacher becomes the student and the student the teacher; but which one was which at the film's start? email this review to a friend
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