October 22–29, 1998

movie shorts

Apt Pupil

There's not much that's surprising in Bryan Singer's film of Stephen King's psychological thriller. You can imagine that this tale—concerning the banal insidiousness of evil—would appeal to the man who made The Usual Suspects. High school football player and whizkid Todd (Brad Renfro) takes his interest in the holocaust to extremes when he recognizes a former nazi officer named Dussander (Ian McKellen) riding the bus. Todd threatens to expose the old man if he doesn't "tell stories" about the death camps, which means that Dussander has serious flashbacks, eventually drawing the already inclined Todd into his nightmare philosophies, for instance, the ease with which you might intimidate or feel superior, say, to your parents or your guidance counselor (as the latter, David Schwimmer in doofus mode makes such thinking too easy). While the film is well-styled (the editing is sharp, the thunder pounds on cue) and McKellen is magnificent (everyone else seems rather pale by comparison), the entire package offers a too-pat moral lesson, given the history it begins to excavate.

—Cindy Fuchs