Good story, Not enough for a whole film

A Masterpiece!

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

The acting in this movie is really good.

2001's The Believer, Ryan Gosling's Film Debut, Gosling portrays Danny Balint. A young Jewish man who is struggling to understand Judaism, while developing Anti-Semetic views towards the World. Though based on real-life accounts of Ku Klux Klan Member Daniel Burros, who was outed as a Jew, in a News article, which later caused him to take his own life on the day the article was released, in October 1965, the film takes place in the Present Day, with a number of flashbacks to Danny's time in a Jewish School, as a young teen.A powerful, dark, extremely controversial, and resonating film, which garnered almost no recognition, though the performance from Gosling was spectacular. This film far exceeded my expectations.7.7/10

When the theme of a movie is neo-Nazis and how they treat other people, especially Jews, you can't help but comparing it to "american history X". So as the film started I began to compare the two movies, but felt that it wasn't fair and it would bias my opinion, so i stopped after 10 minutes and gave it a chance to stand on its own.It just can't.How is it that a Nazi is a Jew, but he's conflicted about it? And lets say i buy that;from the middle and forward the movie became so flat without the smallest effort to give us a peak of this confliction. After the film ended i felt i took a trip to endless nothingness!Total waste of time.

Somewhat unbelievable story of a Jewish rebel. The portrayal of the protagonist as a Neo-Nazi is unconvincing in parts, mostly in his, what seems artificial, love of Torah and the religion he seems to respect but not embrace and intellectually can not submit.These affectionate displays and attachment to the doctrine and dogma are delivered in a rather teleprompter mode as if he is reciting and not truly reflecting on the religious teaching. What is convincing is his disdain and hatred for the pious and superior PEOPLE who practice the rituals and refuse to take a demonstrable stand against its own suffering.What is needed here for the film to be totally successful is the believability of both sides of his inner conflict. His respect for the artifacts and tradition come across as lip service, but his overwhelming overtures and monologues against the Jews come from a deep place and the superficial submission he witnesses from his his fellow clansman are riveting.

The 2001 film "The Believer" is worth seeing for Ryan Gosling's riveting performance as Daniel Balint, a violent, mentally disturbed American, Jewish, neo-Nazi. Unfortunately, the rest of the film is not anywhere as good as Gosling's central performance. Gosling is on screen throughout most of the film, though. I rarely watch movies at home in one sitting and I sat through this entire film, almost afraid to look away, Gosling was so intimidating and fascinating. "The Believer" was inspired by Daniel Burros, (1937-1965) a Jewish man who became Grand Dragon of the NY Ku Klux Klan. After the New York Times revealed Burros' ancestry, he killed himself. "The Believer" opens with Balint menacing a wimpy Jewish student on the New York City subway. The Jewish student cringes, cowers, and attempts to scurry away. Balint menaces him before he gets into the subway car, on the subway car itself, and on the street outside the subway, where he finally pounces, beating the student into a bloody, broken mess. It's a horrible scene to watch. The soundtrack expertly wrings the scene for all the tension and terror it is worth. As brilliantly manipulative as this scene is, there's a problem with it. As much as you hate what you are seeing, you end up identifying with Balint. The Jewish student is weak and cowardly and refuses to defend himself. Balint at least has the integrity to act on his vile ideals. Even if you didn't know that Gosling is playing a self-hating Jewish character, you would be able to read that from his facial expressions. He sneers as if smelling something foul. He begs the student to defend himself. You know that he is beating the student because he hates the despised potential Jewish victim inside himself. That theme – the theme of Jewish self-hatred as a reaction to the Holocaust – is one of the movie's big ideas, and it is not a worthy one. After committing one of many hate crimes, Balint is forced to undergo sensitivity training. He is lectured by three elderly Jewish Holocaust survivors. One describes the Nazis bayonetting his son, peeling the corpse of the son off the bayonet, and dropping the corpse on the ground at the man's feet. Balint turns the table and lectures these survivors. Why didn't you fight? He asks. At least then you would have had your dignity. You were going to die anyway. The film allows that question to go unanswered, and that is not right. Jews *did* fight. Jews fought in the Polish Army when the Nazis first invaded Poland, and in the Anders Army at famous battlegrounds like Monte Cassino. Jews fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the first urban, civilian uprising in Nazi-occupied Europe. Jews fought in the forests with the Bielski Brothers. Jews fought in the Treblinka concentration camp uprising. Jews fought in non-martial ways, as well. There were poetry readings in the Warsaw Ghetto, and Sabbath commemorations in concentration camps. To remember your own culture in the face of death is also a revolt against death. It isn't the responsibility of "The Believer" to provide viewers with this detailed history lesson, but it lessens the value of the film to allow Daniel Balint, a Jewish neo-Nazi, to go unrefuted. Other than Gosling's performance, there isn't much to recommend the film. There are shadowy scenes of fascist plotters meeting in New York City apartments, strategizing ways to take over America. Billy Zane is pretty much wasted in his few scenes as a fascist theorist. Summer Phoenix, River's little sister, has a gratuitous, exploitative, topless scene. She plays the part of a depressive, masochistic fascist sex toy. Through Balint, she becomes obsessed with Judaism, and begins to practice, lighting Sabbath candles and attending synagogue services. This is the movie's second big idea: if you look at it through the right kaleidoscope, being a member of a Jewish community is in some ways comparable to being a member of a hate group like the Nazis. This is just simple-minded, undercooked, grandiose thinking, and this is why, outside of Gosling's performance, I can't recommend this film. There is some incoherent, implausible plotting: fascists meet in the woods and beat each other up; there is a bungled assassination attempt; there are a couple of synagogue bombings. None of this goes anywhere. There's another problem with this film. It is very much in the cinematic tradition of Sexy Nazis like "Inglorious Bastard's" Colonel Hans Landa, "Black Book's" Ludwig Muntze, Oskar Werner, Maximilian Schell, and too many others to mention . Ryan Gosling is a very attractive man and in this film he is shown shirtless, lifting weights, and masterfully beating other men. In real life, Daniel Burros was not so omnipotent, not so sexy. In fact, journalist William Bryk said of Burros that he "was an inept paratrooper: overweight, poorly coordinated and slow. He wore thick-lensed glasses that made his eyes look larger than they were. The other guys in the barracks laughed at him. He had no friends. Finally, he made three phony suicide attempts: a few shallow razor cuts on the wrist; an overdose of aspirin; and again the razor … The Army discharged him 'by reasons of unsuitability, character, and behavior disorder.'"In short, Burros was mentally ill, as is Daniel Balint in this film. Given that the film is about a man who is not processing reality accurately, it is unfortunate that the film provides no coherent counter voice to the flawed conclusions Balint lives by.