Being Tori

I may have just read the Harry Potter books last year, but I grew up watching the movies. For me, Daniel Radcliffe has always been the Boy Who Lived. And maybe I’ve been holding on to my youth, or maybe I haven’t seen enough of his recent work, but since the last HP movie was released in 2011 (holy Toledo, has it been that long!?), I’ve found it difficult to fully separate DRad from HPot. This movie changed that.

Imperium features a whole new Danielle Radcliffe, and he is one talented mother clucker. With his shaved head, militant attire, and all around don’t-mess-with-me attitude, Radcliffe convincingly, and chillingly, portrays a young FBI agent who goes undercover to infiltrate a neo-Nazi organization that his supervisor (and no one else) believes may be graduating from hate speech and generally horrible yet ultimately un-actionable offences to a large-scale bomb attack in DC. So yeah, a little different than good old HP.

While the movie itself had some downfalls—it was almost too easy for Nate to gain the trust of not one, but four high-ranking white supremacists in their respective organizations—Radcliffe’s performance was skillful, focussed, and riveting.