海角大神

In the pulpy but effective 鈥淚mperium,鈥� Daniel Radcliffe plays Nate Foster, an FBI agent who goes undercover inside domestic terrorist organizations bent on getting 鈥淎merica back鈥� from Jews, African-Americans, and others deemed insufficiently white. Radcliffe has done an admirable job over the past few years of shucking off his Harry Potter vibe, none more so than here. (Playing a skinhead, he also shucks off his hair for this film.) Radcliffe鈥檚 performance is edgy as befitting a character who is always on the verge of being found out.聽

Posing as an Iraq War veteran who has become furiously disillusioned with what America has become, Nate is a nimble dissimulator, able to concoct a lifesaving cover story on a moment鈥檚 notice. It鈥檚 not only his own skin he saves: In one especially scary moment, he restrains a pair of 鈥渨hite power鈥� goons from attacking an interracial couple by setting off a store alarm. (His excuse is that he didn鈥檛 want them to be captured by the store鈥檚 surveillance cameras.)聽

Directed and written by Daniel Ragussis and drawn from a story by Michael German, upon whom Nate is partially based, 鈥淚mperium鈥� is a reminder that not all the terrorists in the US are imports. The homegrown examples in this film, who often are at tactical odds with each other, are especially frightening because, on the surface, some of them seem like typical all-American suburban types. The most interesting character in 鈥淚mperium鈥� is not even Nate. It鈥檚 Gerry Conway (Sam Trammell), a seemingly normal family man who reads the great philosophers and loves the music of Brahms and Tchaikovsky, even making an exception for the recordings of Jewish maestro Leonard Bernstein. Terrorists come in all flavors. Grade: B (Rated R for language throughout.)