Has it really been nearly two decades since a scrawny unknown named Jamie Bell killed with his winning performance as a kid in a British coal mining town who dreams of becoming a ballet dancer in “Billy Elliot”?
Yep. And since Bell’s memorable debut in that 2000 surprise hit, through his teen years and his 20s and now his early 30s, he has delivered quality, sometimes screen-popping work, whether he’s punching his way through glossy nonsense such as “Jumper” (2008) and “Man on a Ledge” (2012), or showcasing his versatility in quality fare ranging from “Jane Eyre” (2011) to the “Nymphomaniac” double feature (2014), to this year’s “Rocketman,” in which Bell delivered finely calibrated work as Elton John’s longtime lyricist Bernie Taupin — a gentle and loving soul who serves as the voice of reason and conscience in the film.
In writer-director Guy Nattiv’s timely and disturbing “Skin,” Bell is nearly unrecognizable beneath the makeup and the prosthetics and the tattoos covering his body AND his face — but his brilliance and intensity shines through and further solidifies his standing as one of the best actors of his generation.
Hey. When a guy is equally convincing playing a real-life poet who penned the words to “Your Song” and “Tiny Dancer” and a real-life skinhead enforcer capable of extreme violence, there’s little he can’t do.
Inspired by the 2011 MSNBC television documentary “Erasing Hate,” this a fictionalized and sometimes heavy-handed but worthwhile telling of the story of one Bryon “Babs” Widner (Bell), a hardcore white supremacist who literally had to change his face in order to change his ways.
Early on, we see the muscled-up, fiercely intense, dangerously charismatic, heavily tattooed Bryon (Bell) leading the charge at a fascist march in Columbus, Ohio, in 2005 that turns chaotic and violent when the skinheads clash with protesters.
At that point, Bryon has fully committed to the racist, Nazi-worshipping, cult-like “Vinlanders,” a hate group led by Bill Camp’s Fred “Hammer” Krager and his wife Shareen (Vera Farmiga), who specialize in “adopting” and preying upon lost souls such as Bryon who come from broken families, making them feel loved for the first time in their lives — all in the interest in exploiting and manipulating them into joining the twisted cause.
It’s hardly a spoiler alert to reveal Bryon eventually renounces his ties to his racist “family” and takes steps to begin a new life as an ordinary citizen — but first, he’ll have to undergo an excruciatingly painful series of operations over a two-year period to remove the white supremacist tattoos on his body and his face.
In fact, long before we learn WHY Bryon has opted for these surgeries, writer-director Nattiv periodically offers effectively macabre glimpses of the procedures, accompanied by classical music and title cards with captions such as “Day 1, Removal 1, Chin” and “Day 60, Removal 4, Knuckles.”
Bill Camp and Vera Farmiga are suitably creepy as the leaders of the Vinlanders, who aren’t about to let Bryon leave their twisted “family” without a fight. Danielle MacDonald (“Patti Cake$”) is a standout as the woman who could be Bryon’s salvation, but won’t let his past endanger her children. Mike Colter turns in strong work as Daryle Lamont Jenkins, the real-life activist who has helped a number of neo-Nazis, including Bryon, turn their lives around.
“Skin” is the amazing story of a man who went to extreme measures to change, on the outside and within his heart.
