Slick and didactical

Rating: 7/10 (5 May 2002)

A good movie with good acting and neat, appropriate lessons or message(s) about how easily influenced kids, even smart ones, can be; how confused, insecure people find in group hatred a natural way to vent their anger; how all it takes to realize one's mistake is to once catch a glimpse of "the Enemy" as a _human being_; how, in more ways than one, hate invariably breeds hate. If, however, you already know most or all of the above, you might get bored, or marvel at what a remarkably "clean" movie was made out of such an inherently ugly subject. Sure, the two strayed heroes have their dark sides but both of them, when they're not doing their white-supremacist gang thing, are mostly mild-mannered, well-behaved, polite kids you'd love to have baby-sit your daughter. It's no wonder then, that this dark side is so easily dropped by both at once - it didn't stick in the first place. This movie probably deserves a good place in a history, sociology or philosophy class, but not in a movie collection - somehow lacks subtlety, although in that respect it sure could have been a lot worse.