Bryan Singer
L'allievo

The second story from the collection "Different Seasons", "Apt Pupil (Summer of Corruption)", second film: "Apt Pupil".
Todd Bowden (Brad Renfro) is an ordinary suburban boy, who, intrigued by school studies on the history of Nazism and the Cold War, somewhat casually and then through numerous researches and surveillance, recognizes Arthur Denker (Ian McKellen), an elderly German man living in his neighborhood, as the war criminal Kurt Dussander, who was living there under a false identity while still being sought by Israeli secret services for the horrors committed in concentration camps.
Exploiting the situation, threatening him with exposure, Todd initially persuades him to recount some of what actually happened in the camps, convinced that school teachers concealed too many details, especially the more "interesting" ones.
However, he did not anticipate what might happen and what could be triggered in an ex-SS officer by bringing such horrors to the surface. From the old man's mind, Todd retrieves, with his insistent questions, the most aberrant things, in the face of which the boy does not fail to feel fear due to the brief fits of madness he manages to provoke. Over time, a morbid and perverse friendship develops between the two, as well as a sort of complicity, generating strange feelings tied to hatred and xenophobia.
Todd also reveals his true nature, which unfortunately finds support in the personality of the former Nazi officer but not in that of the quiet elderly gentleman, ultimately proving deleterious for both.
At this point, the movie proceeds with missing details and a bit of Hollywoodism, while the book takes a more horror-oriented turn, in which Todd, instead of going out with girls and playing sports like all other peers, becomes a serial killer of homeless people, conducting real punitive expeditions. This part was not included in the film for obvious reasons related to the story's length and the screenplay.
Both representations culminate in a surprise ending, poorly handled in the film adaptation, where Todd and Dussander kill a homeless man in the latter's house, leaving him dead in the basement, and during the struggle, Dussander suffers a heart attack. Admitted to a hospital, fate plays a cruel (but deserved) joke on him, while Todd presumably will be able to return to a "normal" life.

Singer, as demonstrated in the past, knows how to deliver and sets up a good thriller, which throughout the show proves to be highly significant, though ruined, as I mentioned, by the hurried and simplistic ending.
Notably, the viewer faces a lack of emotional involvement: one can only follow the narrative's main axis, as the figures of Todd and Dussander are deplorable and do not allow for immersion into the story except as a mere spectator. The film can be considered successful despite several flaws, including perhaps assigning the screenplay to a newcomer.
Not a masterpiece, but definitely interesting, especially for the subject matter and the peculiar way in which the boy loses his innocence, which fortunately is not such a common thing.