HBO (Sat., June 24, 8 p.m. ET)
C+
In a drifty dramatization, Oliver Platt plays Yaron Svoray, a U.S.-based Israeli who travels to Germany in 1992 to write a magazine article about the rise of skinhead violence. The early part of the film, as Platt (Funny Bones) mingles uneasily with jackbooted, beer-gulping thugs, is grim and electrifying. But the project curiously loses steam when Platt goes to work for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, posing as the representative of a reactionary American millionaire in order to smoke out the clandestine leaders of Germany's neo-Nazi movement. Somehow the more interested Platt becomes in his crusade, the less we do. Primarily that's because Platt's villainous adversaries become less vivid and, at the same time, the movie's sense of impending danger begins to evaporate. Jonathan Phillips, Peter Riegert and Arliss Howard costar.
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