A Fairy Tale

Rating: 5/10 (16 April 1999)

American History X is basically a fairy tale. It is a film about one man's implausible 3-step transformation from a naive high-school kid to a white-supremist Nazi and leader of a skinhead tribe, to an honest caring upstanding citizen who only wants to do the right thing for his family and society at large. Like I said, a fairy tale. I won't reveal any more of the ending that wasn't already revealed on the preview. Basically it's a mixed happy/sad ending, where the "happy" part is that the main character finally comes to terms with who we was, how evil he was, the way his evilness has negatively influenced the lives of other people, and is able to write a nice cheery new chapter in his life. And all this happens in a short 4 years.
What gets me is how unbelievably intelligent and level-headed the main character (played by Ed Norton) is, and how completely silly his transformation into a skinhead really is.
Meanwhile his kid brother (played by Ed Furlong) who is also reasonably smart, follows in his brother's footsteps like a zombie. Norton's character is clearly free-thinking and is not one to follow in other people's footsteps, while Furlong is just the opposite. At least Furlong's character gives the impression that he might flip and go completely nuts at any given time, thereby adding some mystery to the film (Furlong is good at looking like a punk). But the reality is much more like a fairy tail.
So basically the film doesn't know what it wants to be. One the one hand, it deals with some incredibly moving race issues, and on the other hand we have a children's movie.
I think The Chamber by John Grisham actually did a much better job at portraying a racist who slowly & reluctantly repents and finds the error in his ways, at the last possible moment. At least in that film, we understand that we're dealing with someone who, at his core, is really not a very nice man.
Just the opposite in X.
(5 out of 10)