Henry Bean's impressive directorial debut The Believer opens with a scene showing its conflicted central character trailing a Hasidic Jew and then pummeling the snot out of him simply because of his beliefs. The protagonist, if you feel comfortable calling him that, is 26-year-old Danny Balint (Ryan Gosling, Remember the Titans), an extremely well-spoken and seemingly well-educated skinhead extremist who appears much brighter than the goofy Nazis he chooses to call friends.  Danny, who says the things that he believes everyone else is secretly thinking, hates Jews for very specific reasons, while his cohorts furrow their inbred brows when asked who Eichmann was.

Hating Jews is all Danny ever thinks about, which must be kind of like a latent homosexual yammering non-stop about hating queers (a frat-house epidemic, it seems), because, as it turns out, Danny is (or was) an Orthodox Jew.  We see, through flashbacks, a young, exceedingly nerdy Danny being tossed out of Hebrew school thanks to his constant questioning of God's authority (calling the Big G a "power-drunk madman" and a "conceited bully").  His unanswered queries have evolved into rage and hatred toward this particular organized religion, and the only lesson he seems to have culled from years of yeshiva studies is that Jews are inherently weak.  After all, who else would blindly agree to sacrifice their son, like Abraham did to Isaac, or stand by meekly while Nazis execute the person standing next to them?

When Danny falls in with Lina Moebius (Theresa Russell, Glory Days) and Curtis Zampf (Billy Zane, Titanic), the leaders of an upstart underground fascist movement with big plans, he finds himself drawn closer and closer to his religious roots, kicking off an intense inner battle that grows more intense as his anti-Semitic activities become increasingly militant.  Of course, nobody understands why Danny knows so much about the enemy.  They just assume he's really smart and hope to exploit his knowledge to raise money on the Nazi lecture circuit.

In addition to the inner turmoil, Danny also begins a bizarre masochistic relationship (read: mad Aryan love) with Lina's daughter Carla (Summer Phoenix, Dinner Rush), re-connects with one of his former yeshiva classmates, and becomes the interview subject of a newspaper reporter who has somehow pieced together Danny's religious background and may potentially expose it in a piece he's writing.  The Believer, co-scripted by Bean (who has penned shlock like Deep Cover and Internal Affairs) and Mark Jacobson, was partly inspired by the story of Daniel Burros, a Nazi and self-hating Jew who ran into trouble when the New York Times outed him back in the '60s.

Plenty of folks are going to compare The Believer to American History X.  It's not quite as good, though Gosling (a former Mickey Mouse Club brat along with Britney and Justin) nearly matches the frightening fury of Ed Norton's eerie performance in that film.  There is also likely to be a big chunk of people who dug X but will dislike this picture because there is no final-reel redemption to tie everything up into a neat little package that makes you feel better on the way home from the theatre.  In addition to Gosling's mesmerizing performance, which won't be eligible for the Academy Awards because The Believer is debuting on pay cable before beginning its theatrical run, Jim Denault's (Our Song) handheld camera work is quite impressive.

The Believer won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2001 and was pegged for a cable premiere on September 30, 2001, but was subsequently pushed back after the 9/11 attacks (I saw it at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10, and it did seem a bit less upsetting back then).  Since then, the film has snagged a European Film Award nomination and four Independent Spirit Awards – two for Bean (Best Screenplay and Best First Feature) and one each for Gosling and Phoenix.  Without question, The Believer is a thought-provoking film that will spur discussion and, in some cases, argument.  But it's a film that shouldn't be missed, whatever your religious beliefs may be.

1:38 -

for strong violence, language and some sexual content