Word: nazis
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...McKellen, we'll have you know--and he will too--is not an old man, though you wouldn't guess that from his two new movies. He plays the frail, 67-year-old movie director James Whale in Gods and Monsters, and a Nazi near 80 in Apt Pupil. "People must think I'm in my 70s," he says with a sigh. "My danger is being typecast older than I am." But that, ladies and gentlemen, is Acting. Sir Ian is a lithe 59, two years junior to Redford, Nicholson, Hoffman. He doesn't care to be cast forever...
...with the precision of his plummy voice. He has dwelt inside Hamlet, Romeo, Coriolanus, Richard II and Richard III (in his version, a purring, reptilian gangster), caressed the mood of wistful doom in Chekhov, played Captain Hook and Inspector Hound and, in Bent, a gay man in a Nazi camp. But except for Richard III, which he brilliantly reimagined for film, all these great performances disappeared into the playgoer's memory on closing night. You had to be there; most of you weren...
...risk, no regrets, for in his new films, Sir Ian demonstrates how a lifetime of stage wizardry can be poured into a screen character. In Apt Pupil he is, in director Bryan Singer's phrase, "an old, alcoholic, sitcom-watching Nazi" hiding in California anonymity 40 years after the war and amused to perform a facsimile of his old mischief on a curious teenager (Brad Renfro). As Whale in Bill Condon's film, McKellen is sunset charm incarnate, a gay man melting inside his decaying body for the gross, cheerful fellow (Brendan Fraser) who works in the garden...
...gentle English accent or a brusque German one, but what makes him a great shot for film eminence is how suavely he listens. Listens with his eyes, attentive to nuances of lust or fear that may not even be there. Reacts with a prim wryness that hints at the Nazi's superiority, at Whale's indulgence. These lovely scenes give the audience a chance to study McKellen in wary repose. It's a face worth studying. A movie face, as Hollywood should soon understand...
With a swastika tattooed on his left pec and a gaudy line of rage against minorities, Derek Vinyard (Edward Norton) is the very model of a modern neo-Nazi--the model, at least, to his doting younger brother Danny (Edward Furlong). While Derek simmers in jail for killing two black malefactors, Danny gets the evil message. He writes a paper on Mein Kampf, shaves his head and becomes a good little Hitler youth. Monkey...