Different Seasons spawned three movies (an impressive 75% conversion!) and two of them were good. This was not one of them. It wasn't bad, but just okay. The source material definitely sets a high bar, so expectations may be to blame.
"Apt Pupil" is technically the subtitle of the story "Summer of Corruption" and true to form there are no winners in the story. Both Todd, the punk kid turned Nazi sympathist, and Dussander, the Nazi turned scared old man, begin their respective journeys toward their inevitable suicides. Clearly the producers, in spite of Brad Renfro's involvement, were not going to go this dark. Instead, they decided to make Todd more resilient. Since Dussander was a Nazi, he still dies; nobody is going to miss him. Todd, on the other hand, has grit. He fights back against French. So instead of deciding to go out in a blaze of glory after being exposed, he concocts some dirt on his old counselor to ensure he lives to see another day.
I'm still trying to puzzle out where the movie fell flat. The story is a good deal more gruesome that the movie. Todd and Dussander kill a lot more "winos" than the movie depicts. Also, the intricacy of the writing just doesn't lend itself to a plot that would fit neatly into a normal movie running time. Yet at the same time to really feel just how far these two fall you need to read about all the nightmares and evil deeds, not just some representative acts or consolidations for the convenience of making it under the two hour mark.
Anyway, watching Apt Pupil isn't the worst mistake you'll ever make, but bear in mind that the original story is way better, though not for the faint-hearted.
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