No, we can't all get along

Rating: 7/10 (31 December 2012)

American History X tells the story of Derek Vinyard, a vile, racist, murderous neo-Nazi skinhead who decides he doesn't want to be that guy anymore. But he will find that once you are living that life it is not at all easy to get out. And much to Derek's chagrin he sees his brother Danny going down the same path which nearly destroyed him. Derek knows he has to reach Danny, change him, open his eyes. Before it's too late.
The film's story unfolds in an unconventional manner. We see the present-day Derek, a man determined to do good, to change himself and save his brother. This is intercut with flashbacks which show us the monster Derek was. When the film opens Derek is about to be released from prison. When we go back in time to see how he ended up in jail it is shocking and disturbing to say the least. We see a man consumed by hatred and anger. He tears his family apart. He destroys his own life. And he does it all with a sinister smirk on his face. The saddest thing is that Danny idolizes his older brother. Danny is a skinhead too, proud of it. There was a time Derek would have been proud of what Danny had become. That time has gone. Prison changed Derek. How exactly it changed him is told in quite vivid, brutal detail. And when it becomes clear who it was who eventually reached Derek, changed his way of thinking, it all begins to make sense. The path to Danny's salvation appears. There is only one person who was ever really going to be able to change Danny and that was his brother. But Derek had someone very important on his side to help things along. That help had better come quickly. Danny may be too far gone, time is running out.
It's a captivating film with an undeniably powerful story. But it's not a film without flaws. While Edward Norton is magnificent as Derek there's the sense Edward Furlong, playing Danny, struggles to keep pace. When Norton and Furlong share the screen, and they share the film's most important moments, there's the sense that Furlong just doesn't measure up. There's a certain level of maturity required to handle the very challenging role and Furlong seems to lack it. There are times it's hard to take his character seriously and that's a problem in a film as deadly serious as this one. The film also has a bit of a disjointed feel to it. The nonlinear structure works but not all of the pieces really end up fitting properly. This probably has something to do with the fact the film was taken out of director Tony Kaye's hands and reassembled by others, most notably Norton. There are places where the narrative just doesn't flow freely, the film bogs down. Kaye has said he wanted to make a tighter, shorter film. It probably would have been better if he had gotten that opportunity. The film also does a rather poor job of establishing the roots of Derek's hatred. One flashback dinner conversation with his father is all we really get and that sequence doesn't really work. It's as if it had to be tossed in because there had to be something there at the root of all this. But it's not enough. And then Derek's prison transformation, again not entirely convincing. You don't let go of that much hatred that quickly.
In one of his earlier racial diatribes Derek had invoked Rodney King, the man who famously asked, "Can we all get along?" The old Derek thought Rodney King was some kind of subhuman, the scum of the earth. The new Derek wants us all to get along. But we can't. Some of us have gone too far down the path of hatred and bigotry. You may want to change yourself. But it's hard to change the world. Derek wants to leave his old life behind. More importantly, he wants his brother to leave that world of hate behind. The clock ticks. Time is not on Derek's side.