Clip It: Each day, Jon Davis looks at the world of trailers, featurettes and clips and puts it all in perspective.
It's not easy to blend in with white supremacists, even if you're white. That's the lesson of this featurette, which succeeded in getting me interested in Imperium. Imperium is based on the true adventures of Michael German, who went undercover into that fairly unpleasant world and lived to write a book about it. In the fictional world, this was Agent Stan Zeeman's former job, and if real life is anything like fake life, this is the kind of work that can really screw a person up.
It was interesting to hear both the former agent and the actor playing him (Daniel Radcliffe) talk about how little they knew about guns and espionage, especially the former agent. He din't not have a lot of training. As Michael German tells it, he asked the FBI if he could speak with a white supremacist expert and they told him if he made it through his assignment, he'd be the expert. That's intense.
Both Daniel and Michael talk about how Jason Bourne is not the archetype they were looking at for this film. The protagonist is someone who has to rely completely on his brains. Incidentally, and I'm not kidding, those are basically the words Peter Lentov, showrunner of the MacGyver reboot uses to describe MacGyver. So maybe Danielle Radcliffe should be the new MacGyver. Why not? Is it his height? It's his height, isn't it? Well I would have been into it.
I also appreciated that the film delves into different types of white supremacists. I mean, there's the quick-to-anger guys with veins popping out of their heads, hanging out at mediocre looking diners. There's also intellectual white supremacists, which is super scary. I don't like the idea of white supremacists on Microsoft Word, drinking some sherry, and leaning into the crazy. That's what Daniel Radcliffe needs to put a stop to.
I'm much more curious about Imperium. Are you? Tell me.