Imperium (2016)

Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Toni Collette, and Tracy Letts
Grade: B+

Outside of Harry Potter, this is probably the best we’ve ever seen Daniel Radcliffe.

Summary

We open with a nice little quote from Hitler: “words build bridges into unexplored regions”.

FBI Special Agent Nate Foster (Radcliffe) is working on stopping a potential bombing from some Somalian guy. Nate and a group of agents arrest the guy in the parking lot because the guys that were working with the potential terrorist were actually undercover. Later in interrogation, Nate asks his superior Tom (Néstor Carbonell) if he can talk with the guy. As he talks with him, fellow agent Angela Zamparo (Collette) walks in and argues with Tom about using the room, an admittedly funny scene. In the actual interrogation room, Nate seems to reason with the guy, who explains that his village was bombed because the American government said some terrorist lived there and how everything that was going to happen was a revenge thing. Nate tries to relate to him on a personal level but after going over the man’s intentions and plans of bombing this building, he quickly realizes that though the guy talked about doing a lot of things, he didn’t actually do anything. He even mentions this to Tom in front of Angela.

That night we see a little bit more of Nate. He’s very lonely, and he’s perfectly fine with sitting at home, drinking a glass of wine, and reading a book. The next day at work, everyone meets up to discuss some big crash that happened. The press doesn’t know about it but apparently, there were some containers containing cesium-137, a dangerous substance that combined with a radiological device, is used to make bombs. Two were recovered, but there are expected to be six still out there. If used, there could be thousands of casualties. According to Tom, lab analysis says the cesium comes from North Africa, so they’ve been investigating Muslim communities in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia areas. Angela questions why they haven’t taken a look at domestic possibilities since the last person that built a “dirty bomb” (an explosive device that when detonated disperses radiation beyond the blast) on U.S. soil was James Cummings, a white supremacist living in Maine that was going to set it off during Obama’s inauguration. Tom leaves the option open to Angela, or to anyone else, to pursue any leads they deem necessary.

Sometime later, Angela introduces herself to Nate and brings him into her office. She talks about Timothy McVeigh, a Gulf War veteran and white supremacist. He read a book called The Turner Diaries that was about a race war where the “hero” of the book ignited it all by a driving a truck bomb into a federal building. He was caught before he pulled it off, but he was found with that book. She then shows Nate a clip of Alt-Right talk radio show host Dallas Wolf (Letts). In this audio clip, Wolf talks about his insider knowledge of a truck crashing with radioactive materials that the FBI is trying to cover up. He then says to be ready and armed for a race war. Angela has an informant in a white supremacist group, and the leader of the group is friends with Wolf. She wants Nate to go undercover to join the group and get close to Wolf. Though he’s never done any undercover work and isn’t much of a fighter, Angela convinces Nate by telling him that a majority of undercover work can be solved through people skills. Plus, they’re running out of time since the materials to make the bomb are in the country. After taking himself through a crash course revolving around dirty bombs and white supremacist groups, Nate and Angela go to Tom to get the clearance. Though he seems pretty much against it and how it can ruin Nate’s stance in the company, he relents and lets it happen. His cover becomes that of “Nate Thomas”, a former Marine that was on a WMD Squad in Iraq. He shaves his head and moves into some random apartment, gathering reading materials to further prepare himself like Mein Kampf and Imperium.

He goes through some more training with Angela and to make sure he can get in with his group sooner, they get funding to make a fake medical supply company for Nate to run. This gives him the ability to acquire sensitive materials and be able to hide them because he has the equipment to do so. Angela sends Nate to meet with her informant and that guy introduces him to a white supremacist gang called Panzer Strikeforce and its leader Vince Sargent (Pawel Szajda). Sargent is the one that is friends with Dallas Wolf. Nate meets the small group at a diner, and though Roy (Seth Numrich) is very suspicious of him, Vince becomes impressed by Nate’s resume and quick response time to everything racist. After attending some weirdo rock concert reminiscent of GG Allin, and Vince talks with Nate about his medical supply company, Nate also talks with Johnny, the youngest member of the crew. He seems to befriend him. The next morning, Roy and Johnny show up to Nate’s apartment, despite him never saying where he lived, to take him to get a tattoo. In addition, Roy just wanted to search his apartment. Later, Nate meets with Angela again, and she tells him to not make an enemy out of Roy. She also suggests he should try to relate to the group on a personal level.

Sometimes, this can be hard to do with a group of neo-Nazis.

Nate, Roy, and Johnny go to Gerry Conway’s (Sam Trammell) house for a barbecue but when they walk in, Vince shows them a video of Dallas Wolf being interviewed about this big rally he’s doing and how the Anti-Fascist League plan on disrupting and potentially attacking the rally. After they watch the clip, Nate meets Andrew Blackwell (Chris Sullivan), the National Director of the Aryan Alliance. Vince and Andrew don’t get along though because Vince thinks the Aryan Alliance is too religious based. After this, Vince introduces Nate to Gerry, a leader of some kind that brings everyone to his house for regular barbecues. The mild-mannered guy seems to befriend Nate, who he does consider much more mature than the others at the party. As Nate gets more acclimated with all these characters, they test him at every turn. We see this right after the party. This is where he has to stop Roy from attacking a mixed couple while still looking like a fellow racist. After all of this, he meets with Angela one more time. Wondering about Andrew being in town because his group is based out of Ohio, Nate’s additional task is to find out the link between Andrew and Dallas Wolf.

My Thoughts:

Seeing Daniel Radcliffe branch out since Harry Potter has been very exciting. This is mostly because Radcliffe has not shied away from roles that are (extremely) far from the heroic wizard role that made him famous. Here, we get to see Radcliffe try his hand at playing an FBI agent undercover as a white supremacist, and he impresses. Seeing this Nate Foster character struggle with the terror of befriending these horrible people and acting like he’s down with the cause is a fun one to watch, mostly because at his core, we know he’s a nice and quiet guy. He doesn’t really have any friends, except for the one guy that works at the liquor store. By the end of it though, he doesn’t have any because that same guy sees him at a racist rally. Being forced to double down to stay in character, Nate calls him a racial slur.

Imperium pulls no punches.

You can see how this horrid lifestyle of a white supremacist is eating at Nate, but he wants a challenge. Though he’s ever done any real field work, he’s itching to do something meaningful that can occupy his lonely life. Angela can tell all of this and snatches him up right away for this very important job. When Tom tries to talk Nate out of the assignment, she accuses him of trying to manipulate Nate, and he responds with, “And you’re not?”. He’s got a point. Angela saw Nate’s state of mind and went to pounce on him right away because she knows he’s got a void in his life that he wants to fill. She uses a pretty good argument too, saying that undercover work is more so about people skills rather than shooting bad guys. As a movie fan, I do want to see bad guys get shot, but she does have a point. In regard to realism, this is a way more likely scenario. With this line, she sets the tone for the movie. Despite the threat of violence and militant action, no guns are blown off throughout the entirety of the film and yet, the intensity of an action film is still there. This is why I have to give a lot of credit to Imperium. It surprised me in that sense. I expected a full-fledged shootout by the end because of the implications of certain characters, and the in-fighting between them, but it never got that far. However, it didn’t need to either. It was still very exciting. Angela was right. Undercover work is more about people skills and your ability to talk and sway certain people in certain ways. Imperium is this too. They are able to get as far as they do and get in close with some serious figures in this somewhat large community of villains because of Nate’s understated ability to gain trust and befriend.

He’s honest and though he doesn’t believe in the ideologies of these characters, he’s able to retain that honesty and sincerity in what he’s saying by channeling his real self into the alias of “Nate Thomas”. Radcliffe is able to convey all of this very well and show out in a fantastic, under-the-radar performance.

Early on, Nate says something along the lines of him wanting to change things, so others won’t suffer the way he did. This is a good example of Nate being able to channel his real self into his new persona. As a kid, he was pushed around, and he wanted to get into law enforcement and do big cases like this so people wouldn’t have to suffer. He always wanted to do good and make up for what happened to him as a kid, letting bad people get away with shit. These white supremacist groups think the same way. Johnny makes it known that he joined the gang because he saw a group of black guys beat up a white guy. In a way, this group is arguing the same point Nate is but on a whole different spectrum. This is why Nate is able to use this quote either way and get “in” with this racist faction. He believes in what he’s saying, and they buy it. They just don’t know that when he makes a statement like this, he’s talking about something else entirely. Angela tells him to relate to them as human beings and though this seems impossible, he uses this quote to do just that. There’s a lot that is thrown at us and though I may be overanalyzing a lot of it, I know you’ll see what I’m saying if you watch this very underrated film.

If we are making comparisons, I will say that BlacKkKlansman is a lot better. This may be a bit unfair, but I couldn’t help but make this comparison because the similarities of the subject matter. You got Spike Lee directing, you got a better cast and not only is it just as informative, but it’s also got humor and action. Plus, I think Adam Driver’s Flip did a much better job convincing the neo-Nazis of his racism compared to Radcliffe’s Nate. I still really liked Radcliffe’s performance, as I stated above, but I think Driver dove into it a bit deeper and got a lot meaner with it which I felt was necessary. Both films are very comparable though. Each film has the team captain of the racist group befriend the lead guy on the case, Driver and Radcliffe both have a big blow-up moment on the street to prove they’re bad people in front of the group, and both have that one guy in the villainous group that just doesn’t seem to trust them. The Felix character in BlacKkKlansman was a lot more interesting than Roy in this movie too. Plus, Felix’s wife was outrageously hilarious in Lee’s film. In Imperium, none of the female characters make a difference other than Angela.

There was one funny scene in particular though. I couldn’t help but laugh when the wives talk to Nate in Gerry’s house, and they make cupcakes with swastikas on them and smile like they just made it for a kindergarten class.

What a genius scene to showcase the outrageousness of these people.

One thing that I will say that Imperium arguably did better were the two main villains in Dallas Wolf and Gerry Conway. Dallas Wolf is a great representation of that insane talk radio guy who spends the entirety of his airtime spewing racist propaganda. I know it may sound ridiculous that this type of stuff exists today, but it actually still does. Tracy Letts has the look down as Wolf and his earnestness in his pleas to the public are very similar to those talk radio personalities we hate to hear. His sheep-like audience hang onto his every word, and he knows it. Dallas Wolf isn’t afraid to be the face of the revolution, as long as he doesn’t have to actually do anything. This is what makes him especially interesting. When actually faced with a real chance to make a difference, to make his race war happen like how he so desperately claims, he shows that he’s all talk. In fact, most of these people are all talk. He even tells the FBI this straight up and though he’s such an asshole, he’s so well prepared (and Letts plays it so well) that you think, “Damn, he’s good.”.

After seeing what we see, and everything with Andrew Blackwell, we are just like Nate. We think something real is about to happen, but the FBI refuses to do anything and we wonder why. However, you don’t realize it until Tom flips out on Nate and Angela and goes on his rant. He’s right. Most of these guys are all talk, and they do what they do to just get more recruits, especially in Blackwell’s case. It’s a real eye-opener. It’s a revelation that I very rarely see in a film. Don’t worry, there’s still more to the big ending and everything. I just thought that this was really cool to note.

Along with Wolf, Gerry Conway was also a very captivating figure in the film. Sam Trammell played this soft-spoken, quiet leader of this white supremacist group in such an absorbing fashion, you don’t even realize how important he is to the movie. At first, you’re wondering how evil could this guy possibly be? He seems like the nicest guy in the room! He invites everyone over for barbeques, he doesn’t have any vices, with the exception of eating meat here and there, and he hates cussing. He even seems ashamed of Vince Sargent’s small gang because they represent a chaotic and undisciplined subgroup that makes everyone look bad. Though Gerry invites them over, you can tell he kind of doesn’t want to. Since Nate is more of an intellectual, and not prone to violent outburst like his new friends, he’s able to share this connection with Gerry for the finer things in life. This is clearly something Gerry can’t talk to with many, so it’s nice to see their friendship blossom, amongst the chaos Nate is involved in. You almost believe that Gerry is the coolest guy in this evil group. He seems like a guy that Nate can confide in. However, Gerry shows that he’s not all talk. He just wanted to see who he could trust. There’s a serious turn of events in Imperium and despite the lack of a gunfight, I doubt you would complain about this once the credits roll.

The novelty of seeing Daniel Radcliffe try to be a neo-Nazi definitely carries Imperium but if you’re interested in this type of subject matter, it really shines as an attention-grabbing thriller. It’s not as good as BlacKkKlansman or American History X, but it gets the job done for sure.