Ryan Gosling is Danny, a young man born into the Jewish faith who has become a Nazi and wants to kill Jews. The story of the movie, then, is the conflict in Danny as he reflects on his upbringing balanced with his hatred. He is very obviously self-loathing. He rails against Jewish people, yet wears Jewish garments, protects sacred documents, and teaches his girlfriend to read Hebrew and learn the Torah. He desires to blow up a synagogue yet protects his friends from any harm. And so there's all this conflict going on, yet we're never given any insight as to the origin of Danny's hatred or self-loathing. WHY does he hate himself? We don't know. We're given some insights into his issues with the Jewish faith but not Danny himself. And that's a major hole in the movie. In addition, the actual structure of the movie is a little rough - odd flashback scenes and low production values. Gosling is fantastic in this, portraying the internal conflict in Danny extremely well. He is charismatic, vile, violent, the whole package. That's not really enough to save this though. 3/10.
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