"White Lies" is the story of Catherine Chapman (played by Sarah Polley, formerly of "Road to Avonlea"), a high school senior who, one day, decides that her goal in life is to rid North America of "unacceptable" individuals. Only problem? That includes pretty much everyone.
This movie had excellent potential, if only for the controversy surrounding it. Character Ian McKee (played by an early twenties Jonathan Scarfe, son of Alan Scarfe) had, as part of the storyline, a number of swastika tattooes on his body, and many artists refused to create the fake tattooes. The production companies also ran into trouble obtaining hate literature, Nazi flags, and other such white power emblems, because many people didn't want to pull their trade in such things.
Even with the controversy, though, it wasn't enough to save the film from the basement. The story of a young girl who goes from average to flaming racist to flaming anti-racist cannot be properly told in two hours (which includes commercials). If they were going to undertake the project, it deserved at least six to eight hours.
Unfortunately, they tried to cram the entire story into two hours. The movie starts out with young Catherine attending a multiculturally based assembly at her school. Having been denied a job because she is not fluent in Cantonese, she asks the speaker how many languages she needs to know to flip burgers. Alan Green ("Street Legal"'s Albert Schultz) tells her that she has just made the classic racist statement, thereby humiliating her in front of the school. From there, it goes downhill. A letter posted to a chat room results in a $50 award for Catherine, and brings about an introduction to NIM (National Identity Movement), a white power organization.
For the rest of the movie, Catherine is "Hot Head", a gung-ho, completely racist, hate-ridden young woman. This continues until the last few minutes of the film, at which point Catherine suddenly changes her mind, and goes on TV announcing that, oops, sorry, she made a mistake, but the Holocaust DID happen, and she's didn't mean what she thought, wrote, and said.
The movie is a study in complete contrasts. There is no middle ground in this movie. There are radical racists, and radical anti-racists, both of which advocate violence as a means of proving their point. Both sides are presented as arrogant, narrow-minded, and bigoted. The characters have little or no humanity, and neither side is useful as far as society goes, because they're both so caught up in pushing their beliefs down someone's throat that they don't acknowledge any middle ground.
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