American History X
Having made his electrifying screen debut with an essentially dual role
in ''Primal Fear,'' Mr. Norton now plays a two-faceted character with even
more fury. He appears as the ideologically double-jointed Derek Vinyard, who
begins the film as a hate-mongering skinhead only to undergo a total
personality transformation. Once Derek renounces his past (''Those guys, the
gang, that life -- I'm done with it!'') the film can consider the lingering
residue of bigotry. Not surprisingly (the executive producer, Steve Tisch,
was also a producer of ''Forrest Gump''), it repudiates the same violence it
initially exploited in shocking, lovingly slow motion.
The filmmaker of record is Tony Kaye, but he has renounced this
substantially re-edited version of his work. It's easier to acknowledge the
heady mix of flash and conscience that Mr. Kaye has created, in a manner
reminiscent of politically aware hyperstylists from Michael Cimino to Spike
Lee, than to know whether suffocatingly melodramatic music, pensive water
images and lingering, super-tight close-ups were necessarily the director's
own ideas.
Certainly, someone has arranged the film's time frame portentously enough
to add extra heft to its slender story. As written by David McKenna,
''American History X'' centers on a racist killing that Derek commits with
horrifying gusto. It's the kind of film that milks this violence furiously
and also tries to heat up this episode by watching Derek in a sexual tryst
just before the violence occurs. Though Fairuza Balk plays his nose-ringed
racist sweetie here, the rest of the film brims with the tacitly homoerotic
energy of its skinhead bullies.
''American History X'' saves the details of Derek's viciousness for a
shock later on. What it means to do, at first, is alternate between
black-and-white flashbacks of his fascist heyday and color scenes of Derek
after he has served brief prison time. The contrasts between these scenes
are strong enough to deflect attention from the unlikeliness of Derek's
about-face. Though the vastly talented Mr. Norton plays him searingly well,
Derek is as thin a straw man as the story's other characters, who are
conceived as essentially passive products of their small-minded environment.
Or as Beverly D'Angelo, playing Derek's mom, says while rubbing the shaved
head of her firstborn, ''What did I do to you?''
''American History X'' provides a jumbled litany of factors contributing
to Derek's evil streak, as in a dinner-table conversation about affirmative
action with his father, a fireman. (''America's about the best man for the
job!'' his father heatedly says.) The father's on-the-job death has also
sent his son into a fury, as has his mother's way of smoking and coughing,
deteriorating before Derek's eyes.
The film's pivotal figure is Derek's impressionable younger brother,
Danny, who has a spongelike interest in everything Derek espouses. Danny, as
played with wrenching vulnerability by Edward Furlong, is the film's most
blatant reminder that actions have consequences, though this is something
most viewers will already know.
''American History X'' creates several memorably savage episodes that
hammer home its cautionary ideas. They have been staged with terrible gusto,
as when Derek leads a raid on immigrant workers at a grocery store, or in a
killing sure to make even the most jaded gasp. A black-and-white homosexual
rape sequence has been so strikingly photographed by Mr. Kaye himself that
it makes up for the facile nature of the film's prison interlude. Equally
effective in that regard is a fine, funny performance by Guy Torry as the
black man who is bewilderingly eager to befriend the hostile Derek but
finally makes him see the error of his ways.
Other performances are stagier, like Avery Brooks's turn as the principal
who declares: ''He learned this nonsense, Murray, and he can unlearn it too.
I will not give up on this child.'' Elliott Gould plays the Jewish suitor
whose presence at dinner with Derek's mother is enough to send her son into
a frenzy. Ethan Suplee plays an obese, lonely loser whose white supremacy is
rendered ludicrous and pathetic. Stacy Keach plays the sinister neo-Nazi
ringleader with a taste for malleable young disciples, and he speaks
ominously of the way the Internet has become vital in spreading propaganda.
For all its glaring hyperbole, ''American History X'' knows which raw nerves
to hit. American History X'' is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or
adult guardian). It includes fierce though not gory violence, strong
language laced with racial epithets, nudity, and sexual situations,
including the homosexual rape.
Though its story elements are all too easily reduced to a simple
outline, ''American History X'' has enough fiery acting and provocative
bombast to make its impact felt. For one thing, its willingness to take on
ugly political realities gives it a substantial raison d'etre. For another,
it has been directed with a mixture of handsome photo-realism and visceral
punch.
AMERICAN HISTORY X
Directed
by Tony Kaye; written by David McKenna; director of photography, Mr. Kaye;
edited by Jerry Greenberg and Alan Heim; music by Anne Dudley; production
designer, Jon Gary Steele; produced by John Morrissey; released by New Line
Cinema. Running time: 118 minutes. This film is rated R.
WITH:
Edward Norton (Derek), Edward Furlong (Danny), Fairuza Balk (Stacey), Stacy
Keach (Cameron), Avery Brooks (Sweeney), Beverly D'Angelo (Doris), Jennifer
Lien (Davin), Elliott Gould (Murray), William Russ (Dennis), Ethan Suplee
(Seth) and Guy Torry (Lamont).
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