Skin review – tattooed neo-Nazi turns his face from evil

In this earnest, if limited drama, Jamie Bell plays a far-right footsoldier trying to quit a white-power cult after he falls in loveJamie Bell’s tough performance carries this forthright, earnest, if limited drama, based on the true story of a far-right American skinhead called Bryon Widner and his attempts to leave a neo-Nazi white-power cult.

This involved the agonising removal of his grotesque facial tattoos with their various Hitlerian symbols and fantasy nordic insignia.

It’s a vivid metaphor for the denazification process.The film is written and directed by Israeli-born film-maker Guy Nattiv (working from a TV documentary called Erasing Hate).

He was an Oscar-winner this year for his short film, Skin – which has no relation to this feature, other than a shared thematic concern with racial conflict.

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