Review of Imperium (2016) by Ben W — 27 May 2017

With such great potential for a story set undercover in white supremacist America its disappointing to see it doing so little. Daniel Radcliffe does a great job acting but the characters he surrounds himself with have little narrative consistency.

You can either go with the really scary Nazi route, or you can go with the Woah! I like the neo-Nazi this isn't right! The problem is that the movie goes for both. This makes the white supremacists feel less threatening lowering the stakes.

But on the other hand, the other characters only marginally open up to why they are white supremists. Telling us that they had anger, but never really showing us their confusion. The of course at the end you get a flippant mention of feeling like the victim as an explanation.

I feel they divided the baby on this one. That said, its an entertaining movie. There were a couple of times with decent amount of suspense and it's enjoyable to see how Daniel will woo and court his next Clansman or Neo-Nazi.

So it's not a total loss, just more of a lost potential.