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APT PUPIL Send This Review to a Friend
Despite the solid acting by Ian McKellen as an unregenerate ex-Nazi murderer, "Apt Pupil" is an obnoxious exploitation of the Holocaust in what amounts to an ugly story of the corruption of a young man by a force of evil. It is based on a novella by Stephen King.
Bred Renfro plays a high school student so fascinated by his studies of the Holocaust that he gets the goods on a fugitive war criminal whom he discovers living in his area. He approaches the elderly man with his proof but says he's not interested in turning him in to those who have been hunting him. He just wants to learn what committing atrocities was really like. A series of conversations begin, but the criminal, Kurt Dussander, is diabolical. He manipulates the student so that by the film's end, he becomes as nasty a human being as his Nazi mentor.
Perhaps the idea could be worthwhile in more creative hands, but as directed by Bryan Singer from this script, the film merely uses the story for cheap melodramatic, horror-film ends. The relationship we watch is obnoxious without shedding any real light on human behavior. A Tristar Pictures release.
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