Apt Pupil
Apt Pupil is a 1998 American thriller film directed by Bryan Singer and starring Ian McKellen and Brad Renfro. It is based on the 1982 novella Apt Pupil by Stephen King. In the 1980s in southern California, high school student Todd Bowden (Renfro) discovers fugitive Nazi war criminal Kurt Dussander (McKellen) living in his neighborhood under the pseudonym Arthur Denker. Bowden, obsessed with Nazism and acts of the Holocaust, persuades Dussander to share his stories, and their relationship stirs malice in each of them.
Plot
In Southern California in 1984, 16-year-old high school student Todd Bowden discovers that his elderly neighbor, Arthur Denker, is Kurt Dussander—a former Nazi concentration camp commandant who is now a fugitive war criminal. Todd, fascinated with Nazi atrocities perpetrated during World War II, blackmails Dussander, forcing him to share disturbing stories of what it was like working at Nazi extermination camps and how it felt to participate in genocide.
Awards
More details
| author | Brandon Boyce |
|---|---|
| award | Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actor |
| contentLocation | California |
| director | Bryan Singer |
| editor | John Ottman |
| events | The Holocaust World War II |
| genre | drama thriller |
| keywords | air embolism arrest concentration camp death camp disturb extermination camp genocide heart attack high school student homeless person icarus israel kill nazi nazism neo-nazis neo-nazism nothing old man school counselor southern california talk true identity valedictorian war crime war crimes war criminal young boy |
| musicBy | John Ottman |
| producer | Bryan Singer Don Murphy Jane Hamsher |
| publisher | Sony Pictures Releasing |
| recordedAt | California |
| theme | psychological drama psychological thriller |