Sentiment and swearing (spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (12 October 2003)

Imagine what moral a white nationalist might draw from this film. Derek begins it as an articulate, if extreme, exponent of a case with which you could sympathise: his Venice Beach neighbourhood has been "invaded" and brought down by blacks and Latinos. Sure, he's a neo-Nazi skinhead with a swastika tattoo who stomps on black carjackers for fun, but that's par for the Hollywood course; its imagination cannot really encompass the possibility that any less caricatural figure could dispute the agenda of diversity.
So this guy goes to jail, meets a nice black inmate, gets raped in the showers by a nasty white (prison movie cliche #101) and emerges (a mere three years later) determined to... what? Well, he's full of love and peace in theory; but he's lost his eloquence and what he wants desperately is to get himself and his family out of the 'hood. In fact he's become just another white-flight specimen who mouths political correctness while being grimly determined to avoid its less enjoyable real-life consequences. And the fact that a black kid then gratuitously kills his kid brother would only validate that choice in a white nationalist's mind.
Tony Kaye was a commercials director, but the film mercifully avoids visual excesses most of the time. On the other hand, as re-edited by Norton it emerges as little more than the standard liberal uplift, why-can't-we-all-get-along message pic, with added swearing and sex which ensures it won't be seen by its most potentially impressionable audience, the under-18s.
Elliott Gould is stuck into one scene as a wet Jewish liberal, improbably dating the brothers' widowed mother. Avery Brooks, the rifle-wielding sidekick from "Spenser: For Hire", does an image change to become an infinitely wise school principal "with TWO PhDs". Neither character supplies much of a reason why Derek should change his ways; nor do the prison scenes. Ultimately, the reformation is presented not as a political but as a private necessity, since "life's too short to be p*ssed off all the time". Danny tells us to listen to "the better angels of our nature" and a heavenly chorus swells over a pretty sunset. Therapy culture triumphs: purge yourself of racism and feel better about yourself, especially if you can relocate to a gated community with the remains of your family, grow your hair and get a white-collar job.
Oh, and even if your dad's a fireman who died on the job, don't forget to repudiate him. In an extraordinary scene towards the end, it's suggested that the father's well-reasoned hostility to affirmative action set Derek on a course which led to "Mein Kampf" and trysts with a sinister backroom manipulator of punk music lovers. That's the problem with "American History X": as soon as you begin to think about its premises, it collapses in a heap of absurdities.