Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating portrayal of a split, megalomaniacal personality
Review: This movie was incredible, the most interesting and well-acted presentation of neo-nazism and post-WWII judaism that I have seen. I was a little surprised that some reviewers mentioned American History X. The two films have little in common, other than the politics of their protraginists. Though American History X was enjoyable, it was not the powerful film (despite the infamous curbing scene) that The Believer is.Inspired by a true story, Ryan Gosling plays Daniel, a self-hating Jew who denies his heritage and joins up with an American fascist, neo-nazi movement. One reviewer has said that his self-loathing comes from the perceived inability of the Jews to fight back against their attackers, and this is certainly part of the equation. (In one of the more powerful scenes - though there were quiet a few of those - he tells Jewish survivors of the Holocaust that they ought to have "killed their enemies".) However, the flashback the movie provides of Daniel telling his teacher at Hebrew School that he alone recognizes G-d for the "conceited bully" that He is suggests that Daniel's flaws run deep indeed. For it is Daniel, as the movie's first scene shows, who is the real "conceited bully". Brought up with an idea of a punishing G-d, a G-d who would order the Jews to kill their own children, he becomes that G-d by completing the task that Abraham began. Needless to say, the psychology of the protaginist is the main draw of the movie and what will leave the viewer wondering for hours afterwards. Ryan Gosling's performance is simply incredible, and he gives perfect voice to the twisted rational of modern anti-Semitism. His accusations are refuted, here and there, by other Jews, but the movie doesn't once stoop to the level of preaching. Simply an excellent, excellent film.
Rating: 
Summary: "And What Shall We Learn from You Daniel?''
Review: When Danny Balint (Ryan Gosling) is ordered by a court to sit with and listen to Nazi War camp survivors describe their ordeal, after he and several of his neo Nazi friends desecrate a Jewish Temple, one of the survivors asks the above question: and it's a good one as it not only questions Danny's motives for his crime but more importantly it goes to the essence of Danny's spirit and core. For you see, Danny is not only a Neo Nazi he is also a Jew.
Danny is extremely intelligent, well read and exploding with ideas as well as full of self loathing and disgust with himself. Through several recurring flashbacks we see Danny challenging his Yeshiva instructor on several points culled from the Torah. But why is Danny so angry? So angry that he savagely beats up a Torah student on the street in the shocking, vulgar, jazzily edited first scene of the film. So angry that he participates in an attempt on the life of a Jewish Financial leader. The problem in "The Believer" then is that it is not clear as to what makes Danny tick...what is it about his psycho-pathology that motivates him to act as he does? Would a bad time in school or a weak realtionship with his father propel him towards this kind of self-hatred? Unfortunately, there is almost no evidence presented on the screen to resolve this dilemma; and this is a major failing of the director and screenwriter, Henry Bean.
"The Believer" is rough and ungainly in it's mise en scene with several scenes lacking propulsion and inner fire which in this type of film: out for the provocative, the vulgar and the shocking, cannot afford.
Ryan Gosling gives an unnerving, scary and oddly sympathetic performance as Danny. His Danny is not a total animal and Gosling is especially effective when conveying Danny's soft, empathetic side. The scene with the Nazi camp survivors is especially moving because Gosling's Danny cannot help but be affected by one man's story involving his son's death at the hands of a Nazi guard: Gosling's face exhibits all the conflicting feelings of disbelief and disgust as he actively fights back his tears of sympathy.
Getting back to the question: "And What Shall We Learn from You Danny?"...symptomatic of the film as a whole; it goes unanswered.
Rating: 
Summary: LAME SKINHEADS
Review: Still looking for another homoerotic movie like Romper Stomper to feed your passion for tattoos and skinheads? keep on looking and pass on The Believer. Although Ryan Gosling (as Danny) is young and hot looking he only has his shirt off for a few scenes and the rest of his skinhead motley crew are worthless dopes who don't scare anybody, especially the elderly jewish survivors at their sensitivity training who give them a verbal tongue lashing and seem ready to "BRING IT ON". This movie may be interesting for Jews to explore their religion, persecution, and accept its place in their lives. For the rest of us, Danny seems unbelievable as this sort of "Tony Robbins" of neo-nazi hate seminars.
Rating: 
Summary: I believe it's good
Review: Okay, I'll get the cliche out of the way right now: "The Believer" is a thought-provoking movie. Love it or hate it (and this is a movie that could easily inspire both views), "The Believer" will almost certainly make you think. Telling the story of a Jewish neo-Nazi named Danny Balint, the movie is a harrowing examination of the nature of belief and self-perception, every bit as provocative and hard-hitting as the better-known "American History X." Although the idea of a Jew who hates his own people may seem contradictory, the movie reconciles it very well. Through frequent flashbacks to Danny's Yeshiva class, the audience sees that Danny feels God is a bully and the entire history of the Jewish people is one of weakness and submission. Although much of his propaganda is just tired repetition of Nazi beliefs, Ryan Gosling's performance invests what he says with undeniable conviction. Danny's hatred is deeply rooted in his childhood experiences, and unlike many of his skinhead bullies, he *believes*. At the same time, Danny seems conflicted about what exactly it is that he believes. In one scene vitriolic anti-Semitic sentiments are pouring out of his mouth, in another he's repairing a sacred Jewish scroll that his friends have damaged. No matter how hard Danny tries to reject his roots, it seems the connection to them is too strong to sever completely. I think what "The Believer" was trying to get at is the confusion young people experience between accepting what they're taught and forging their own beliefs. Danny clearly has strong feelings and wants to believe *something*, but is having trouble figuring out what it is. In that sense, "The Believer" is about as apt a title for a movie as I've ever heard. It can be viewed in its most obvious form as a cautionary tale about the seductive nature and the dangerous potential of hatred, but that's a somewhat narrow view. What I thought the makers of the film were really going for was an examination of the difficulty young people can have in finding both their place in the world and their own belief system. But whichever way you look at it, "The Believer" is a gripping view, and highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: a conflict between who a person is, and who he chooses to be
Review: A film by Henry Bean Danny (Ryan Gosling) is a neo-nazi skinhead. At a meeting among other like minded individuals discussing how to bring about the rise of the Nazi party in America, he brings up killing the Jews. The other people at the meeting express shock and disagree about the necessity of this, but Danny speaks so passionately and articulately that while they don't agree, they are moved by what he says. Danny hates the Jews. He hates them. The film opens with a powerful sequencesthat is intercut with the opening credits on a black screen. We see a teenaged Jewish student getting onto a train. The music starts to pick up in intensity and Danny is getting closer to the student, pressing closer and intimidating. When the student leaves the train he is confronted and attacked by Danny. Now we see what kind of person Danny is. On the lapel of his jacket there is a Nazi Stormtrooper button. Danny joins up with another group of young neo-nazis with the intent of harassing, damaging property, and even killing a Jew. This is the ultimate goal. To kill. To persecute. If this was all the film was about, we might still have a decent movie. But "The Believer" is much more than this because of who Danny is, and more specifically, what Danny is. Danny is Jewish. Now we are presented with the issue of Danny's hatred towards his own people (and by association, himself). Why does he hate them so much? How could he have turned out this way? There are no simple answers and the film does not present any, though we see him angrily questioning as a child. There are partial answers that the film suggests, but nothing concrete. This is the power of the film, the conflict between what Danny is and who he chooses to be.
Rating:
Summary: Ryan Gosling - wow, what a performance
Review: 'The Believer' has 'small-budget film' written all over it (the presence of Titanic's Billy Zane notwithstanding). It looks small whenever lead Ryan Gosling is off the screen. But, thankfully, that's only for a few minutes. Because when he's on, the sheer raw intensity and magnetism of his performance fairly leaps off the set. This is an incredible performance. Gosling's Danny Balint sells his demented thinking with such fervor and absolutism that he wins over follower after follower. There's a great little pastiche of scenes where Balint speaks to a small group. You see three, four of these gatherings. They're arranged chronologically. Each time, the crowd grows. The word is obviously getting out about Balint and his spellbinding oratory. That's great work by director Henry Bean. As noted by other reviewers, the seminal scene in the film is when Danny lovingly protects the Torah as his fellow travelers trash a synagouge. Bean has done a wonderful job setting up a collison course - Balint's virulent, self-loathing anti-Semitism vs. the incultated, Othrodox beliefs and practices of his youth. The Torah scene is where it comes to a head. Knowing the 'The Believer' is based on a true story makes it all the more affecting.
Rating:
Summary: THE BELIEVER: But What to Believe?
Review: THE BELIEVER is one of the most controversial films in recent memory. Director Henry Bean presents a film that won the prestigious Moscow Film Festival award in 2001. Ryan Gosling is Daniel Balint, a young Jewish man who, early in his Talmudic studies, simply could not grasp the concept of Jew as a passive servant of God. For him, the essence of Judiasm had to be power which could only be expressed when Jews dared to set themselves against God. He rebelled, left the shul, and gravitated toward Neo-Nazism. He shows himself to be more brutal toward Jews than do his fellow skinheads. Soon enough, however, Daniel begins to distinguish between Jews and Jewish artifacts and beliefs. He has no problem stomping on a yarmelked Jewish man who refuses to fight back. The more this victim passively accepts that stomping, the more Daniel becomes enraged. Later, when he and his skinheads desecrate a synagogue, he refuses to permit the destruction of its holy Torah scroll. He even takes it back to his home to repair it. Slowly, he begins to re-evaluate his motives as if he realizes that individual Jewish lives mean nothing, but immortal Jewish traditions mean everything. THE BELIEVER is a shocking film that is less about hatred of Jews and more about what it means to be a Jew. Early on, Daniel makes this point clear when he insists that anti-semites hate Jews for the wrong reasons. Money, media control, and cabals have nothing to do with that. The real reason that fuels hatred of Jews, he maintains, is that Jews simply are. Parents love their children as naturally as non-Jews hate Jews as an unspoken law of nature. Those who first saw THE BELIEVER during its intial release worried that it might fuel the rise of anti-semitism. In fact, THE BELIEVER presents Jews in a positive light, as a group that can endure unremitting agony to such a degree that Daniel misinterprets that as synonymous with a welcoming of that agony. At the end, the audience, through Daniel, has come full circle. To believe in the necessity to endure the blind hatred of a two milennia old hatred is a Faulknerian virtue, not a Hitlerian vice.
Rating:
Summary: amazing film
Review: this movie blew me away.....i didn't expect the mental and emotional anguish that was so very raw. (does it get more raw?)
the exploration of Danny's wrestling with G-d, Jewish history, and loathing (personal and social)in the context of white supremacy was incredibly profound. Ryan Gosling truly nailed the part. I found myself knowing very well the questions with which Danny struggled and the earnest and visceral search for resolution. Danny is very cerebral and very visceral. How amazing one can yearn for integrity filled with intense disdain and loathing. Did Job ever get so angry in confronting such unknowns?
Rating:
Summary: Raising a fist to God
Review: Towards the end of THE BELIEVER, I mused on the similarity of the film to the 1975 screen production of THE MAN IN THE GLASS BOOTH starring Maximilian Schell. In the latter, Schell stars as a reclusive, wealthy, Jewish, Manhattan industrialist, Arthur Goldman, who (apparently) has used his connections and financial resources to create the fiction that he's a former Nazi prison commandant, a fabrication (apparently) leaked to the Israelis. Without knowing this beforehand, It comes as a surprise to the viewers and Goldman's associates, but not to Arthur himself, when he's kidnapped (as was Adolf Eichmann) and removed to Israel to stand trial as a war criminal - on display in a glass booth wearing full Nazi regalia. Schell is stunningly powerful as the concentration camp survivor who goes to extremes to exorcise his personal guilt at having outlived the Holocaust, and what he sees as the collective guilt of his people for not fighting back. In THE BELIEVER, Ryan Gosling is Danny, an incredibly intelligent, literate and articulate 22-year old who spends his days as a neo-Nazi skinhead preaching hatred and expressing the desire to kill Jews. His activities run the full gamut from planting bombs with a group of like-minded, mindless thugs, to fund raising in a suit and tie for an upscale Fascist organization. The thing is, you see, Danny is himself a Jew with deep emotional ties to his heritage. It's perhaps an over-simplification to say that Danny hates Jews. Rather, he hates the message that Orthodox Jews preach, i.e. that Jews are but the pawns of God and must be submissive to His will - even to the point of abject pacifism in the face of the most extreme persecution. Danny is not, nor has ever been, submissive to his religion and its appointed teachers. He doesn't loathe his Jewish self so much as the thought that his religion automatically makes him a submissive creature. Basically, he wants the Chosen People to fight back. This is evident early on as he savagely beats a meek, yarmulke-wearing teenage boy while screaming, "Hit me! Hit me!" Moreover, he figuratively shakes his fist at God, daring Him to strike him dead for his rebellion. At one point, Danny asserts that the Jews are naturally a wandering people thriving on the prejudice they encounter, and that the Israeli's have risen above their Jewishness because they now have a land to call home. Since the Israeli's are aggressively militant in their own defense, it seems to me that Danny might just as well be a staunch Zionist. Why he isn't is a mystery. But, no matter, because Gosling, like Schell, is stunning as a guilt-ridden and psychologically tortured individual seeking inner peace. While the film's conclusion is the ambiguous sort that invites extended coffee house discussion, it's evident that Danny goes to an extreme to find it. And the very last dialog that's heard, "There's nothing up there", leaves an aftertaste of the nihilistic view that Danny suspects is true.
Rating:
Summary: the best film of the year
Review: The Jewish Nazi, a wonderful film based on the true story of a Jew turned nazi and then turned Jew again. This wonderful film documents the long strange path of a young Jewish man who becomes a neo nazi youth leader only to re discover himself. Poignant scenese throughout. One scene finds the nazis ransacking a temple and our antagonist rescuing a Torah scroll from the carnage. He cradles it like a mother holding a baby. Other great scenes include a long drawn out flashback invovling a Jewish man whose boy is murdered in front of him by the nazis. We watch as the antagonist goes from wanting to be the nazi to wishing he was the Jewish man so he could take revenge. A wonderful masterpiece of controverisal wisdom about rediscovering yourself through becoming an extremist. Self hate is a big Jewish topic some may identify with. Otherwise the film may leave you a little untouched. Some will be offended but the film really shows itself to be enlightening and very realistic, exposing Nazi propoganda for the filth it is and showing the true joys of Jewish faith.
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