American History X

There was a discussion going on on Gone Elsewhere about what movies we hadn't seen, which ended up pinpointing the film that is highest on the IMDB Top 250 that remained unseen by each of this. For me, it was American History X, which was released in 1998. This was a conscious decision on my part, even though its star, Edward Norton, was nominated for Best Actor, and I usually always see every movie that gets an Oscar nomination, especially in the acting categories.

So why did I pass this by at the time? I have never been comfortable with anything about the Nazi skinhead culture. I can watch movies about the Nazis of World War II, because I know they lost, but the very notion that scum like these people exist makes my skin crawl. Even if the film, and it does, condemns these people, just watching them behave is disturbing.

But I sucked it up and watched it, and it's okay. It takes kind of a simplistic approach to the subject, with director Tony Kaye even using black and white film when Norton is a racist (everything is black and white to him) and color when he has seen the light. The script, by David McKenna, is at times didactic, but makes the great decision to make Norton intelligent--most white supremacists have little education, but Norton's character, Derek Vinyard, is a thinker. In a scene at the family dinner table, an argument about the Rodney King case comes up, and Norton will almost have you agree with him, wrong as he is.

The film's structure is that Norton has been arrested for killing a couple of black gang members who tried to steal his car. His younger brother, Edward Furlong, worships him, and continues to associate with the skinhead movement, exemplified by a sloppy, obese idiot (Ethan Suplee) and the crafty Fagin of the gang, Stacey Keach, who stays out of legal trouble by having his minions do it for him (we see them ransack a grocery store owned by Koreans who they think employs illegal Mexican workers). When Norton gets out, he severs ties with Keach and tries to impress upon his brother that this way of life is foolish.

We then get a flashback to how Norton changed in prison, when he realizes his Aryan brothers are just like everybody else and a black guy (Guy Torry) befriends him, even if he does have a massive swastika tattooed on his chest. His conversion is a little too pat, but I can understand this is a movie, and it has to happen quickly.

At times Kaye applies too strong a hand on the material, when he could just let it breathe a little. But Norton does anchor the film solidly. His best moments are silent ones, such as the look he gives Furlong when he is being arrested, as if to say, "Keep the fight going." But I didn't care for a character played by Avery Brooks, a black principal who is working with the police and the prison system. He's a little too good to be true, and a cliche at the same time. He reminded me of Pete Dixon from Room 222, the noble black teacher, and that was forty years ago.