L'apprenti criminel

This film was based loosely on a bizarre murder investigation and subsequent trial in Pennsylvania. At the time, in the 1920s, backwoods Pennsylvania had folk-medicine healers called Pow-Wows, and the film involves one. These healers relied on a book, "Long Lost Friend," written by a George Hohmann, that was full of prayers and folk remedies based on a form of sympathetic magic, that were supposed to cure ailments and the like.

The Sutherland character is a Pow-Wow, and a youngster, played by Lucas Haas, becomes his apprentice. A series of bad events takes place in the community, and the Pow-Wow suspects a neighboring farmer, culminating in the murder.

Significant Spoiler: The film is ambivalent on the nature of the Pow-Wow's power, and leads the viewer in one direction, and then suddenly reverses itself. This weakness could have been sidestepped easily. It would have been a better film if it had.

"Apprentice to Murder" carries an interesting theme with its narrative about a young man (Chad Lowe) who befriends a medicine man (Donald Sutherland) who can feel the presence of demon in other people and decides to commit murders in the name of God. Sounds something you seen before in other movies but this time we have a real life story that took place in the late 1920's. However the movie fails to deliver an interesting story and also fails to make viewers curious or deeply interested in the story thanks to a slow oriented presentation that takes ages to reach its summit and present the horrific elements behind the final murder.

Here's a regular and weak movie with some fine performances. Too bad those don't match with such a film that wastes the use of good actors (Eddie Jones is amazing as the boy's drunken father, and Donald plays the usual sinister type). The more it progresses the more the film gets stuck with repetition and a really progression of events that waste everybody's time. Don't waste yours, not even out of curiosity in seeing how the performances and settings go. 5/10.

This direct to video film has a strange pedigree. It's supposed to be set in a Pennsylvania Dutch town and is made by a Canadian production company...and it was filmed in Norway!! To make it even more confusing, the term 'Pennsylvania Dutch' is an erroneous one, as the settlers were Germans, not Dutch...and the word 'Deutsch' (meaning German) was somehow bastardized into Dutch. I mention this because my family is originally from that part of the country and my relatives HATE folks thinking when they are Dutch when they are usually German or French-German. Now that I've given you a bit of a history lesson, on to the film!

The film claims to be based on a true story. It stars Donald Sutherland as an odd preacher/medicine man/exorcist as well as Chad Lowe (Rob's brother) as a young man working in a tannery (a really awful job). Over time, the young man becomes the assistant to the odd preacher and ultimately they get in trouble when an exorcism goes wrong.

This is a weird film. It tells the story from the point of view of the preacher and his assistant. In their eyes, they did nothing wrong exactly....but the law saw it differently and you'll just have to see it to understand more about this.

The acting is pretty good and the production values aren't bad. But the story itself is a bit nonsensical and weird...and not in good ways. I really am not completely sure why they even made this strange movie...suffice to say many people watching it will likely not be all that impressed with it.

Just want to ad that much of the movie is filmed at the west coast of Norway and in the city Bergen.

I probably liked the movie because of that... The buildings and landscape fits the movie well. Based on how religious some people were in some areas at the west coast (maybe still are), and how strong some believe in the super-natural, the story gets a good framing from the Norwegian nature.

Some of the landscapes are probably gone to day, farming areas are becoming suburbs, and the cities are growing. But you may still find some buildings, and the scenes from the center of Bergen are almost identical to day.

If you're planning to watch this simply because you're a Donald Sutherland fan, don't bother. He isn't likely to impress you with his mediocre performance here. As the for the film itself, it's watchable but very minor. It manages to remain reasonably interesting most of the way, but it doesn't have many surprises to offer and it MOVES LIKE MOLASSES!