White Lies

Sarah Polley is excellent in this admirable TV movie. Her Catherine is a memorable performance. Her acting skill is so amazing, sometimes it is disconcerting, as when she turns the tables on a government official holding the anti-racism portfolio and you find yourself rooting for a neo-Nazi! The film is generously endowed with many extreme closeups of that amazing face that is able to show so much with so little obvious "acting."

I loved it.. it wasn't shallow, it was deep. It made me think, even the day after. Somehow, there are few really good movies that makes you think, often they're just too theatrical and shallow and doesn't seem real at all. Another great movie I'd like to recommend is 'a simple plan' with for example Bridget Fonda and Bill Paxton. If you haven't seen 'White lies': give it a try! And Sarah Polley was really really great.

Sarah is an intelligent middle class girl neglected by her parents. In the extreme right wing group NIM she finds the warmth and friendship she's been looking for. Slowly she's drawn into a pool of violence and racism. It takes a dramatic event for her to realize what mess she's in. If this all sounds extremely standard, that's because it is. Combined with an experimental style that makes the film look like a medium budget video clip, this is not something to stay at home for. It's not bad though: the acting is good and except for its total lack of originality the script is well written. So if nothing else is on, and your local cinema is only showing some brain dead action flick, you might want to give it a chance.

I give this a 6, only because the movie is worth watching as entertainment (5 points) and an extra point because it is BASED on actual events and people in the neo nazi and far-right movement in Canada.

I don't really understand the other viewer thought American History X is so much more realistic or powerful; in my opinion it is not. It only has better acting and more violence.

The acting is not horrible in "White Lies", but about what you would expect from a made for TV Canadian film.

The organization "NIM" can be roughly compared to the real life group "Heritage Front" and events that happened mostly in Toronto in the early 1990s.

The anti-racists are not well represented in the film, which is usual for any neo nazi film, and the neo Nazis are portrayed as supermen who always win fights, or else it takes ten or twenty of their enemies to beat them.

Everything from the young women defecting in the end, arson, fights after concerts and suicide is based on actual events that happened in Ontario, Canada.

I won't get in to more details as to not spoil it, but this movie is a must see for anyone interested in anti-racist studies and the cultural impact of actual far-right movements in North America.

The beginning of the film 'White Lies' was surprising to me, because you don't often watch North-American films with political racism as the theme. The psychology of the shy main character was described well, the rhythm of the film was good, and original with a sound-track that seemed to come from a 1970's film.

But, then, the second half was disappointing, as the film came into the domain of "Hollywood Nazism" and, like some others comments said, cartoon characters. The sentimental and pathetic ending of the film doesn't do much good to it.

A study on how intellectual people, e.g. at college and university, can be attracted by extreme-right ideology, as it was at the beginning of the film, could have been more interesting