A film that elicits more questions than answers.

Rating: 7/10 (29 May 1999)

Any time you go in to make a massive moral statement in a film, much as in an essay, you should be able to back up your argument with equal or greater strength. A lot has already been said about why racism is bad-great movies have been made showing the idiocy of it-and yet it still persists. I'm worried that this film might actually do more harm than good. I thought the skin heads were very well portrayed to the point that their line of thinking could be agreed with by young people who are looking for an answer to there problems. The problem is, the counter points were mainly shown in violent cinematic splendor. The type of stuff we have become conditioned to see with a disclaimer going off in our head saying "it's only a movie".
I kept waiting for a moment to pop up when our hero(?) would come through with a truly compelling reason to show his change of heart, but it didn't happen for me. The homosexual prison sequence is the kind of stuff people (who this film was meant to reach) might find funny. And the death at the end bit has been done so many times; it has become convenient to simply off a principle player as a solution.
I felt it was coming close when we were shown how Derek was made to realize that it would take more than a change of heart on his part to make things right; he would have to address his past actions to make things right.
Then the movie ended.
Now one could argue that the death of his brother would have a greater impact than anything else they could have shown, but, as said earlier, it's been done so many times that it seemed like more of a cop-out.
There can be no arguing that Ed Norton was brilliant. Maybe his performance was too good. The look in his eyes after he'd killed the man with his foot was chilling. I saw this look of pride and accomplishment on his face that made me wonder if some young and impressionable sort watching this movie might get the idea that it might be cool to do similar. And that scared me more than anything the movie could have shown.
It's easy to counter this argument with the statement "It's only a movie", but this was a "message movie" and I feel there is more danger in the right people getting the wrong message.