Review of American History X (1998) by Ws W — 08 Aug 2015

It's always nice to see a movie about racism where there are no good guys... Can't get much more real than that. But it's also nice to see some of these characters change, and see that "hate is baggage. Life's too short to be pissed off all the time." The hate and the anger are powerful.

Edward Norton is simply remarkable here, and I'd raise his performance up against any single actor's performance in any film that I've seen. It's really that good. And sometimes, films only have that one iconic performance that holds together the movie. While it's true that without Edward Norton, the film would have probably been average, awesome supporting roles including Edward Furlong, Beverly D'Angelo, Fairuza Balk, and Ethan Suplee raises it to another level. Norton's character, Derek Vinyard, goes through every gamut of emotion from love, to hate, to self doubt, respect, tolerance, and total despair. It's a performance for the ages.

I think what's most telling is the view of racism by the film's director, Tony Kaye, and writer, David McKenna. Nobody wins. Derek and Danny reform, yet tragedy strikes. Seth and Cameron become more hateful than ever, and they get burned. Black guys go for revenge, they either die or go to jail. Nobody wins. And it's something the world should be paying attention to.

I think this is a very important film in the annals of Hollywood, from High School on up. It's nearly required viewing, along with another film with a similar subject matter, called Higher Learning. But Higher Learning didn't have Edward Norton. Higher Learning didn't have quite the profound message. All the performances were tour-de-force, and this film gets my highest recommendation. Be aware of graphic violence, nudity, rape, and a lot of heavy language, from cursing, to racial slurs. Some people put the film down saying that none of it was necessary, but, I say to that, in order to paint a quasi-realistic picture of the dark subject matter, there are no limitations. Hate and anger get you nowhere. Again, highest recommendation, and a part of my top 100.