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Apt Pupil

A review by Mike Shea   Movie Rating: ( * · · · · )    DVD Rating: ( * * * * · )

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I had some trouble with this one. I wasnt sure what to expect from a Steven King short story directed by the guy who did Usual Suspects, but I expected better than this. This is a film about the relationship between a 16 year old high school student and a nazi war criminal. One of the problems is that you never quite figure out the motivation of the two characters. Is our hero (not five minutes later, I have already forgotten his name) just cureous about the horrors of a death camp, or is he one step from Ed Norton in American History X? Is the old nazi a man drinking his way through the demons of his past, or just a monster waiting to die? It is never really clear and even after the killing of a pigeon and the scorching of a kittie, we are still not sure what path these two have taken. Mix this with a bunch of blackmail crap, some very boring "whos F...ing who" talk and only the occational haunting vision and you have a pretty lame ass flick. I understand why the critics of this movie said that it didnt have the artistic right to use the real horrors of nazi Germany as a centerpiece for a pretty weak thriller. The DVD isnt bad at all with a 16x9 enhanced picture and a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. The only extra was a pretty weak making of feature that wasnt more than an elongated ad. Overall, I cant recommend this one.