Starts as a thought-provoking commentary on Racism and ends as a simplistic Anti-racism propaganda ...

Rating: 7/10 (11 November 2011)

Tony Kaye's "American History X" intelligently tackles the subject of violence and racism and how this dangerous dichotomy is deeply rooted in the social injustices and everyday frustrations endured by American people regardless of their skin. But while it raises very thought-provoking interrogations, it fails to come back with meaningful answers.
I concede that the film was brave enough to have a very unsympathetic character as the lead, Edward Norton is brilliant as Derek Vinyard, a young ideologically disoriented man whose level of hatred and violence is defined by his aptitude to kill and a huge chest-tattooed swastika, and the film was even braver to try to depict his 'moral salvation'. But the film's problem is that both his downfall and his redemption are not treated with the same level of intelligence. I couldn't buy it would take only one rape by a gang of Nazi prisoners and a subplot involving the friendship with a black guy working in the laundry, to redeem Derek. How could the movie be so indulgent toward his racism by reducing it to a sickness whose only remedy was 'to see the light'?
If David McKenna's script had the guts to depict one of the most disturbing and shocking (realistic) deaths: the curb-stomping, how did he expect to make a nice guy out of such a despicable character in less than two hours? It took more than three for Spike Lee to make us root for "Malcolm X" and he wasn't as cold-blooded and merciless as Derek Vinyard. Intelligence and fast-paced editing are not the most compatible elements for such provocative and promising character studies. Unfortunately, the whole deconstruction of Derek's personality fallaciously shows him more as a victim of racism than the true and condemnable perpetrator of racist acts. And this is a dangerous intellectual shortcut contradicting the idea that we're all determined by acts committed in a responsible way.
And Derek sure the hell knew what he was doing as a skinhead leader, yet the film shows him as a good kid with a good heart who let himself absorbed by racial prejudices as soon as his father was killed by black people... and the movie pretends to display a crucial plot twist through one scene where the prejudices of Derek's father foreshadows his descent into racism. The black-and-white choice for the flash-back sequences is ironically fitting because it features the two sides of Derek Vinyard, when he's too bright for his entourage or too violent, in-between, there's an absence that would have probably provided the right answers, or at least, some hints.
Take for instance the dinner table scene, probably the most gripping and morally challenging of the film : Derek exposes his views with such confidence that we're tempted to root for the core of his ideas (cleared of course from their blatantly racist overtones). At one moment, Elliot Gould, playing a Jewish professor, even speaks about the persecution of Jews with an irrelevance that almost justifies Derek's point about people from any communities raising the 'Antiracism' flag every time they feel offended in order to avoid self-criticism, blocking any attempt of rational discussion. And then, all of a sudden, as to destroy all the interrogations the scene just constructed, Derek acts like a one-dimensional evil thug, concluding in an anti-Semitic rant against Gould, proudly showing his tattoo.
So Derek is not racist with a heart full of anger whose seeds was planted in the field of 'legitimate' frustration, he's just a bright kid who used his charisma and rhetoric to be the spokesman of a Neo-Nazi group. "American History X" evokes the manipulative effect of racist theories ignoring that it uses the same rhetoric tricks as the anti-racism : when you can't reply by constructive words, just be offended, and it's made easier when Derek is the offender. I really want to quote Gould asking Derek "What are you trying to prove?" That racism is only the way some people choose to ignore their own responsibilities and point their fingers on other communities? That's fine except that this is how anti-racism works too and the whole film is also guilty for having portrayed Derek as a victim of unfortunate circumstances.
Should we be indulgent because he lost his father? Should we consider that he got the lesson just because he was anal-raped by the Nazi-men in jail? Are we supposed to believe that the Hispanic or Black prisoners are such gentleman that they decided to give a break to Derek?? What's with the idolization of Hitler by Daniel Vinyard, Edward Furlong as Derek's younger brother? Only a consequence of his admiration for his older brother? So all it would take to fix it is a sweet debriefing from his brother, and a history paper course with a cool-sounding title. The movie is so judgmental toward 'racism' that it should have the decency to depict the limits of blind and institutionalized anti-racist lobbying; then it would have really been ahead of its time.
And the ending was another example of a manipulative getaway, the dark tunnel with the light of hope, Daniel gets killed by the very black kid he provoked the day before  symbolically, I would have accepted this death as a tragic eye-for-an-eye response to the curb-stomping, but then I'd like to know –and sorry to insist on a technical aspect- why the director didn't shoot that scene again because I'm sorry, Edward Norton, one of the greatest actors of his generation, wasn't convincing. I even spotted some embarrassing moments where he looked like smiling, and that wouldn't have deserved an Oscar.
While it was asking for an unconventional social commentary, with the same intellectual courage as Spike Lee's "Do The Right Thing" or "Malcolm X", this "X" falls in the politically correct trap that inevitably patronizes us through its subliminal 'Racism is bad' message, and the movie didn't deserve that, not after such a promising start anyway.