Skin (2018)

A just world would place [Bell] in the awards conversation, but ours will probably not give Skin the platform necessary for that to happen.

It is Bell who makes the movie, belligerent, coiled fury from the tip of his bald head to the toes he bounces on as he stomps into the frame, threatening one and all, righteous in his racist wrath.

Less dynamic than “American History X,” and less lurid than some treatments of similarly themed stories, “Skin” is a compelling character study whose narrative momentum flags somewhat around the three-quarter point. Still, it never loses interest.

There are times when Skin can seem naïve and manipulative, almost in the same breath, which takes the film perhaps too long to get its bearings. But Bell is the binding force that locks us into Widner’s tumultuous journey.

After a while, the film’s not-strictly-linear structure and handheld camerawork come to feel like self-conscious signs of “gritty” realism, attempts at masking a certain conventionality.