Imperium (2016) - A Movie Review

I meant to post this review yesterday or the day before but work got in my way. Now that the United States has shown that it actually does support racism at the highest level by electing a president that is a racist and was endorsed by the KKK, I feel like I'm both too late, and that we need this now more than ever. Don't let hate win.
Anyway, here's the review:

Funny story, I was browsing the shelves at my local largest-retailer-in-the-world store looking for the 1995 live-action film of the lovable friendly ghost, Casper. I couldn't find it, so instead I bought a movie about an FBI agent who goes undercover to discover a potential white supremacist plot to blow up a dirty bomb in/near Washington DC.

Oh yeah, Daniel Radcliffe is in it. I love Daniel Radcliffe.

Boy oh boy, what a movie. Let's start off with the trailer.

If that didn't get you interested I don't know what will. Infiltration. Revolutionary activity. Riots. Nazis.

So let's jump in.

Daniel Radcliffe is a treasure. The Harry Potter movies often devolve into hot garbage but they'll always be worth something because they gave us Radcliffe and Radcliffe himself is always just so good. He doesn't let me down here. He's equally at home at the start of the movie, playing the somewhat nerdy feels-barely-qualified FBI agent, and as his undercover persona as a white power supremacist. He's got chops.

The rest of the cast is good as well, with a few well-known actors and a few "where have I seen him before?"s. To point, in the trailer that big scary Nazi dude with the beard is Chris Sullivan who plays Benny Hammond in Stranger Things, and if you don't know who that is or why that is such a shift of character, then GO WATCH STRANGER THINGS. Anyway. Good cast, mostly all do a good job (more on this later).

The other big thing about Imperium that I want to mention is just how terrifying it is. These sorts of people actually exist. White supremacist terrorism doesn't really get brought up in those terms a lot, but that's what a lot of this is. Racism is so counter-productive, and so counter to reality, and yet these people are so entrenched in their beliefs that they'd die, or worse kill, for them. Its frightening.

If there was one word that I would use to describe Imperium that word would be "tension". There are multiple scenes where the tension is so thick. My room-mate said he was constantly wringing his hands as we watched. There were so many close calls, so many chances to be discovered, so much craziness going on. If nothing else, this shows that we were invested in the outcome of the film, which is the sign of a good movie.

Quick note to say that I also thought the cinematography was good. It was mostly functional, but there were a number of scenes where the movie was elevated because of good camera work.

Overall good movie.

And yet, this movie was not perfect. Daniel Radcliffe, as mentioned, was phenomenal (no surprise), but not everyone else was. Occasionally performances dipped into noticeably not as good. I don't know if I want to blame the actors or director or even editor for this, but somewhere something went wrong. I also want to specify that I don't expect everyone to give an award-worthy performance, but sometimes the lack of performance was distracting. Only slightly so, and maybe I'm being overly critical, but regardless it was noticeable.

On a similar note, there were a few predictable moments, and a few moments that felt like they skirted a bit too close to cliche. For example, tension between our protagonist and the people on his side that really only existed because you have to have that moment of "failure" before the real win. Just some simple but obvious story-telling devices that seemed over-obvious.

Do flaws like this ruin a good movie? What is most important in telling your story? What is most important in making a movie worthwhile or even excellent?

For Imperium, these minor imperfections didn't take away from the moments of the movie that were most important. Those moments of tension. Seeing Radcliffe's character maneuver amongst these dangerous people. The emotions brought on by these things were strong, and minor imperfections didn't take away from that. The movie was powerful, regardless of it not being perfect.

Overall, definitely worth watching. Imperfect, but it still achieved what it meant to achieve.
Judging only on technical film-making I'd say it lands somewhere around 7/10, but for emotional investment and storytelling, easy 9/10. Ratings are garbage anyway, don't trust them.

Final quick note for content, the movie is rated R for language, and that is not an exaggeration, but its mostly language to serve a purpose. It's mostly people having frank conversations, and a lot of those people are terrible racists, so they do often use terrible language. If you don't want to hear that, don't see the movie, but get over it and see the movie anyway.