Review of The Believer (2001) by Jonny B — 26 Aug 2011

I will get flak for this yet, despite the holocaust and a myriad of atrocities and skewed ideologies, the Nazi's had some good ideas. I am not talking about anti-Semitics or eugenics. Germany was a thriving country, the best in the world as far science, technology, philosophy, and art. So it's easy to see how Neo-Nazi scum can live by this (malignant, sickening) ideology.

'American History X' is a great movie with a lot of strong scenes and speeches. Norton was remarkable and the photography was beautiful.

So here we have 'The Believer', which is the best movie I have seen on Neo-Nazis. With a smaller budget the movie cannot indulge us with B & W symbolic scenery - who needs that when you have Ryan Gosling? Gosling's performance tops Norton's performance and here is why: Norton was chewing up scenery, wanted the movie to be his own, and used his buffed-up menacing act to convey emotions with strong glimpses of his transformation. So what does Gosling do? He was born Jewish that conforms to Hitler's poorly written ideologies, shows incredible depth in range, is more a human than a caricature.

'The Believer' is a powerful and disturbing movie and one that is almost solely Gosling's show, displaying his genius as an actor in every scene. There's intense dialogues, speeches, beating, killings, and . . . I cannot give it away. If any movie somehow intellectualizes and understands what Neo-Nazi are really about I suggest 'The Believer' over the MTV-stylized, almost glorified violence of 'American History X' - and I say this because every ignorant youth I grew up with cited 'X' and the curb-stomping scene as 'fucking awesome." 'The Believers' doesn't give the uninformed something to cheer about nor does it shy away from the brutality, nihilism, and internal struggles that members of our terrible new movement that is the Nazi party live by.