Review of American History X (1998) by Sam F — 02 Apr 2013

This is perhaps one of the best movies I have seen in my life, alongside Green Mile, Shawshank Redemption, A Beautiful Mind and Primal Fear. Edward Norton's Oscar-nominated role as the pissed-off-Nazi-loving-skinhead-turned-to-good-boy is simply amazing. I guess that is what made me like this fiilm very much. Change. And a hell lot of racist commentaries and conflicts and some hard-ass copulation (feeling obliged not to write the 'F' word here). It's basically a tale of how this one youth, Derek, affected by the death of his father who died in the hands of a Negro, turns into a Skinhead and becomes extremely racist. Soon his brother, Danny wishes to follow in his brother's footsteps just when Derek is sent to jail. It is from then on that Derek wishes for his brother to turn away from it all. It's quite a good morality story, I will have to say.

On the technical side, Anne Dudley has also provided a wonderful score for this movie as well. Honestly, I was half-expecting mostly heavy metal, punk, hard rock sort of soundtrack, something which I would usually hear from most skinhead movies, but instead, I got well-written orchestral music bursting from the speakers as the images played by. The cinematography is okay, using black & white mode to depict events from the past and colours for those in the present time. The screenplay is also well-done, inserting small bits of simple everyday humour effectively into the dialogues. The plot may have been quite predictable, but the film makes one fall in love with the characters so much (especially Edward Furlong's and Edward Norton's characters) so much so that, even if one were to have foreseen what was coming in the end, one would still feel emotionally affected by it. At least, I was.

Overall, this is an excellent film which has a good story coupled with high production value. It will definitely be one of my top 5 favourite films of all time.