Apt Pupil

The Stephen King novela on which this is based has long been one of my favorites of his works. This is due to the fact I can totally relate to the motivation of our young protagonist. This of course has greatly disturned many of my Jewish friends but I can understand how one would pump a Nazi war criminal for historical information rather than turn him over to the authoirites. In this Bryan Singer adaptation we are given a flawed represenatation of King's vision. The film is well enough made even with the variated ending but the problem is with the great Ian McKellen......he is simply TOO good in the lead as said Nazi and because of this everything around him pales in comparison. While Brad Renfro does his best to hang in there he falls short as does everybody else with perhaps the exception of Elias Koteas. Poor Joshua Jackson is all but wasted and what the hell David Schwimmer was doing here is beyond me but he looked like a fish out of water. Despite is short-comings APT PUPIL is one to be seen solely on the strength of McKellen's work which is superb.