Likeably absurd...

Rating: 6/10 (13 November 2019)

Likeable albeit thoroughly preposterous nonsense that somehow sits in the IMDb top 40 ahead of titles like Modern Times, Bicycle Thieves and Rashomon.
Edward Norton plays a white supremacist who learns love and acceptance of black people after going to jail and befriending a black guy who tells him jokes. He then realises that white supremacists aren't all they're cracked up to be after they rape him in the prison showers... something he later claims he's "glad" happened.
The film eventually enters an ever higher point of absurdism, as overblown, showstopping music - the kind only an American studio would think was appropriate - fills the screen. Scenes like two brothers tearing down their bedroom decorations of Nazi memorabilia are pat and simplistic, and too "easy". The plot lines take over the movie, and characters change from scene to scene because they're required to, not because of realistic motives. Even a typically eccentric performance by Avery Brooks can't rescue the film from its ludicrous premise.
At date of writing, American History X is rated on the IMDb as the 35th greatest movie of all time, comfortably ahead of Citizen Kane, Taxi Driver and Apocalypse Now. It's watchable stuff, possibly for all the wrong reasons, but probably shouldn't even be in the top 350, let alone top 35.