This Film Is All About Edward Norton's Performance

Rating: 5/10 (21 June 2010)

Edward Norton came out of nowhere in 1996 to deliver a trio of performances (in "Everyone Says I Love You," "The People vs. Larry Flynt" and "Primal Fear," for which he received an Oscar nomination) that left everyone amazed at his versatility. Then came 1998 and his beefed-up performance in "American History X," that no one believed he could pull off and then won him a Best Actor Academy Award nomination. I think it's his performance, rather than the movie itself, that people have since reacted so strongly to. He's great, but the movie is a bit of a hot mess.
Norton plays a skinhead who goes to prison for a vile crime and comes out a reformed man, determined to see that his little brother (Edward Furlong) doesn't go down the same path he did. But director Tony Kaye doesn't have a disciplined bone in his body, and the film has too much stuff constantly going on to give the story or its actors their due. It also doesn't help that Furlong, whose character we're supposed to be rooting for, is a vaguely unlikable actor who it's hard to warm to.
If an actor who on paper looked to be more suited to the role than Norton had played the lead, I wonder if this film would have the cult following it does.
Grade: C+