Apt Pupil (film)

Apt Pupil is a 1998 American thriller film directed by Bryan Singer and starring Ian McKellen and Brad Renfro. It is based on the 1982 novella of the same name by Stephen King. In the 1980s in southern California, high school student Todd Bowden Renfro discovers fugitive Nazi war criminal Kurt Dussander McKellen living in his neighborhood under the pseudonym Arthur Denker. Bowden, obsessed with Nazism and acts of the Holocaust, persuades Dussander to share his stories, and their relationship stirs malice in each of them.

In southern California in 1984, 16yearold high school student Todd Bowden Renfro discovers that his elderly neighbor, Arthur Denker McKellen, is in reality Kurt Dussander a former Sturmbannfhrer in the SS who is now a fugitive war criminal hiding from justice. Todd blackmails Dussander by threatening to turn him in to the police. However, the teenager is fascinated with Nazi atrocities perpetrated during World War II, and forces Dussander to share disturbing stories of what it was like working at Nazi extermination camps, and how it felt to participate in genocide.To complicate things even further, Todd even purchases an SS uniform from a costume shop, and forces Dussander to wear it. When he spends more time with the old man, his grades suffer, he loses interest in his girlfriend, and he conceals his bad grades from his parents. In turn, the Nazi blackmails the young boy into studying to restore his grades, threatening to expose the boys subterfuge and his dalliance with Nazism to his parents. Dussander even poses as Todds grandfather and goes to an appointment with Todds school counselor Edward French David Schwimmer. Talking about the war crimes affects both the old man and the young boy, and an intoxicated Dussander attempts to kill a cat in his gas oven but fails when it attacks him and escapes. Dussander also takes great pride in Todds unbelievable turnaround, going from near dropout to straight As in a matter of weeks. ........

Source: Wikipedia