Weak, shambles, facile moralising.

Rating: 1/10 (15 November 2010)

Making a movie about racism is a very easy way to tap into an audiences pre-existing righteous anger without the need to really explore the subject, treat it with respect or develop any kind of understanding around it. AHX knows this, so advances a paper thin plot with any number of ludicrous clichés, cardboard characters and dopy narrative devices. Edward Norton is no longer the Universes least convincing skinhead (stand up, Elijah Wood), but this movie stretches credibility way past breaking point.
The movie doesn't actually try to analyse racism on the more subtle, insidious way in which it exists in most peoples lives. Sure, there are neo-nazi and black power groups around, but this isn't most people's experience of racist behaviour. Only at the end of the movie do we get any hint this, when we see Dereks father discussing his pejudices over the dinner table. But this is very fleeting and it doesn't really give adequate justification for why Derek decided to go down this road in the first place. The movie should have spent far more time looking responsibly at the root causes of such peoples actions and ideologies - but that isn't as easy or as sensationalist as portraying all racists as maniacal cult-heads or separationists. The presence of characters like Stacy Keach's Manson-esquire demagogue serves the questionable purpose of allowing audience members to distance themselves entirely from these kinds of beleifs. Most people I think struggle to some degree with inherited prejudices as a result of ethnicity, class, geography, economic status etc, but films like this pander to our solipsistic view of ourselves as utterly non-judgemental by suggesting that racism only occurs amongst the lunatic fringe.
Additionally Tony Kaye more or less disowned the finished product, claiming that Edward Norton used his star clout to have the film re-edited so that it was more to his liking. The main point of contention seems to have been that Kaye felt the film should have had 'an adequate black voice'. I'm not quite sure what was exactly meant by 'adequate', but I can totally agree that the films narrow scope shifts sympathy onto the white protagonists in a confusing and dubious way. Because almost all of the black characters are so unlikeable, aggressive and one dimensional, with no context to explain their actions, and because one of them ends the film by murdering Furlongs character (a child) for pretty much no discernible reason, it's hard not to feel like we are expected to empathise with Derek and possibly feel like his original agenda was justified. AS well as this, when a 'liberal' character like Murray is portrayed as an ineffectual, idealistic fool, you begin to wonder why the film is so intent on making a violent, near-psychopathic skinhead into some kind of marginalised voice of reason.
Films that attempt to tackle the race issue in modern society will always fail to deliver as long as they are content to sit back and simply push buttons in order to generate a calculated response. The overwhelming majority of people in society know racism is a bad thing, but most ignore how endemic it is. Pinning it all on some gun totin' extremist hooligans, then not even being able to properly decide who you are sympathising with is not the mark of accomplished, mature filmmaking.