APT PUPIL (United States)
A review by Mark R. Leeper in bullet-list form
from the Toronto Internation Film Festival
CAPSULE: A boy fascinated by the Holocaust finds a fugitive war criminal living in his neighborhood. What follows is a battle for power of each over the other. The theme of the Holocaust seems misused. Good performance from Ian McKellan (so what else is new?). Rating: 6 (0 to 10), 1 (-4 to +4)
- Directed by Bryan Singer though APT PUPIL is not nearly as good as his THE USUAL SUSPECTS. - Todd Bowden (Brad Renfro) is fascinated by the Holocaust and has memorized pictures of all the principles so he recognizes Kurt Dussander "the Butcher of Treblinka" (Ian McKellan) when he sees him on a cross-town bus. With photographs and fingerprints he gets evidence that this Arthur Denker really is the Kurt Dussander whom he thinks he has found, then follows a game of power between the two. Initially Todd just wants to hear an eyewitness account. But the game between the two becomes more serious. - We never find out why Todd is so interested or what his point of view is. In the final analysis APT PUPIL has little to do with the Holocaust. It is just there as an excuse why Todd knows something that had can blackmail Denker with. In fact, it ruins some of the credibility. Denker tries to blackmail Todd by threatening going public. A war criminal would never do that. - Some shocking scenes where Todd uses Denker as a puppet. - Todd wants to understand the Holocaust better than he can from books but the script does not have anything for Dussander to reveal about the Holocaust that is not already common knowledge. - When Todd's grades suffer, the guidance counselor makes an offer to Todd that no high school would ever offer. It is convenient for the plot, but makes no sense. - Denker is fighting to defend a meaningless existence of drinking whiskey and watching cartoons. - It was not six million people killed in the Holocaust, it was six million *Jews*. There were ten to twelve million *people* killed. And a pie graph on the board seems to show only about a third where it was really a much higher proportion. - A simple documentary about the Holocaust like "Night and Fog" is far more chilling than anything that Singer managed to get on the screen. What is a single murder next to ten million murders?
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1998 Mark R. Leeper
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