User reviews

It's overly self-indulgent and self-promotional and, quite frankly, a work that seeks to promote the very elements of ethnic elitism that, ironically, was the foundation of Nazi superiority that led to the group's intense suffering. Writers Henry Bean and Mark Jacobson use the standard mechanisms to try and get the viewer to avoid seeing the self-promotion (including the disappointingly sophomoric articulation of the dynamic during one of the main character's uber-self-aware monologues) but the near-constant drive to get across the message makes it impossible. Because of this, the main character's struggle and pain are effectively props. There was such promise here - a character where we could identify with the internal struggles and conflicts and become engaged as they evolve into wholeness. But instead the character becomes a tool for the writers' own desires to promote their own ego specialness, with presenting tired old clichés of ethnic superiority. A little self and group awareness goes a long way, gentlemen, and these old ideas die hard. Self-deprecatory self-promotion is getting very tiresome and even more so in this character that acts as a bullhorn for the writers' shared prejudices.

I found this movie, brain numbing more then anything else.

The director tries to portray Gosling as an intelligent underachiever with the wrong mindset, which is very hard to believe when they have Gosling slur out lines that you would think to hear on an Episode of "South Park", and to believe that he could have intelligent people listen and believe what he's saying is outrageous.

The supporting cast is also terrible, i really cant comment much on them other then saying that most of them would have been best suited in daytime TV dramas.

The action scenes suffer from the same disease, not believable, with fight scenes more at home in a B class movie.

I wouldn't recommend seeing this movie if you wanted to see something with depth and intelligence.

The Believer is like Danny: confused. The movie raises a lot of questions but answers little of them, in particular regarding the reasons that pushed him to develop such a hate.

The script has almost no twists or turning points, and the dialogues are ultra verbose, which leads to an overall linearity and very slow paced rhythm.

The direction and editing aren't much of a help either. The flashbacks fit badly with the story, but more importantly Henry Bean used tacky, ridiculous visual effects throughout the movie such as weird slow motions.

In the end, the only satisfaction of this film is Ryan Gosling whose acting abilities are already noticeable even with his little experience at the time.