Imperium

Daniel Ragussis wrote and directed his first feature out of what former FBI agent Michael German told him. German spent a year undercover among white supremacists and then wrote a book called Thinking Like a Terrorist; Ragussis read it, got in touch, and they built the story together. Nate Foster, played by Daniel Radcliffe, is invented. German’s account sets the shape of the film: an agent is outnumbered and outgunned, so what keeps him alive is talk rather than force, and the film stretches the conversations rather than the fights. The premise turns on stolen caesium 137, and its real move takes the threat away from the loudest man. The radio host Dallas Wolf considers himself an entertainer rather than a believer, and the Geiger counter in his house is reading his radiation treatment. The danger sits with a white collar engineer and family man. Shooting took place in autumn 2015 in Richmond and nearby Hopewell, Virginia. The first set photograph of a shaven headed Radcliffe went out in September. A good fit if you will wait for the radio agitator to turn out hollow and the threat to surface in the quiet engineer. Not for anyone unwilling to sit through racist rhetoric at length; the BBFC passed it 15 and wrote racist behaviour into the advice line.