Le pacte de la haine

An interesting and true story about a group of mad Neo-Nazis. William Baldwin plays a character down on his luck, who gets roped into joining a hit squad for a fanatical outfit. Also stars the rather lovely Kelly Lynch (from Drugstore Cowboy). The topic is both disturbing and very scary.

After a brief tour in the army "Tom Martinez" (William Baldwin) comes back home where his fiancé "Susan" (Kelly Lynch) is there to meet him at the bus stop. Not long afterward they get married and settle down. However, because of his limited education he is unable to get a very good job and things get even worse when he is fired from it due to affirmative action. Feeling betrayed and discriminated against because he is white he subsequently joins a right-wing hate group. At first, the majority of the time is spent in discussions which basically feed their hate and anger, but eventually things become much more serious and quickly spiral out-of-control. It's at this point that Tom realizes just how serious some of his colleagues are and even though he disapproves of their methods finds that separating himself from them is much more difficult than he ever could have imagined. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film is supposedly based on a true story and for that reason it has a "documentary" feel about it at times. But it still managed to keep my attention for the most part and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Average.

A TV movie that is typical of a, well, TV movie. The safe, saccharin study of a disturbing cult of White Supremacists supposedly based on "true events". The atmosphere is handled in such a "by the book" (The Turner Diaries?) expose' that it unfolds as, what it is, an uninspired "Movie of the Week".

It moves along quite un-effectively as we see a military vet hurriedly placed in a setup that sheds little light on the complexity of politics or revolutionary eruptions.

The movie is a "Classics Illustrated" or Cliff Notes version of deep divide and even deeper psychological pathologies. A climate of calm seems to be the way to go here, when what is necessary is a categorical storm of "jack-booted" thugs, not dressed up players from SAG reciting lines from underground books and mouthing scripted dogma cribbed from handouts and flyers.

Working-class Philadelphian Tom (William Baldwin) has caught a number of tough breaks since he left the army. But his beautiful, doting wife Susan (Kelly Lynch) stood with him through all of it. The result of their union is a beautiful daughter. The result of Tom's lack of education and career choices however is a rundown apartment and a pile of unpaid bills. Tom can't even hold down a job pushing a mop.

Seeing himself as hardworking and patriotic he comes to view his predicament as symptomatic of an elaborate conspiracy new friends tell him about. They are members of a highly dangerous neo-Nazi group led by charismatic and driven Bob Mathews (Peter Gallagher) - a psychotic conspiracy theorist and religious zealot with a sinister agenda and a group of devoted followers holing up in a compound in the Pacific Northwest to help him carry it out.

Mathews has extrapolated from fiction (The Turner Diaries) and fringe fundamentalist religious teachings a plan of action to violently undermine a federal government which he believes to be controlled by forces he considers malevolent.

Tom - a simpleton of jaw-dropping naiveté is drawn in hook, line and sinker but becomes uncomfortable when the activities of the group surpass the boundaries of legality veering off into counterfeiting, armed robbery, terrorist bombings and murder.

Based rather closely on a true story this production fails by focusing the majority of screen time on its weakest aspects - Tom Martinez's arc within the movement and William Baldwin's awful characterization playing him.

The plot should have centred around the Bob Mathews character and Peter Gallagher's performance as the driving force behind this frightening movement and it's most infamous act which was the murder of talk radio show shock jock Alan Berg.

Rob Labelle and Stephen E.Miller are American-born actors who found a niche in Canada's film industry often getting work by playing American characters in productions set in the United States but shot north of the border.