Gripping and intense, and Norton is fabulous enough to rise above the clichés

Rating: 7/10 (8 January 2010)

American History X (1998)
Well, Edward Norton is so astonishing, and almost scarily convincing, you can overlook a lot of the well worn themes that guide the plot. In fact, all of the acting is strong, especially the little brother to Norton's skinhead character, an up and coming skinhead played by Edward Furlong.
The movie is covers basically a 24-hour period, but a good half of the screen time is flashbacks, presented in black and white to great effect. Not only does this help us keep track of what we are watching (the different lengths of hair help, too), but it adds pure style to what is basically a violent crime and prison film. It's fast, well edited, and filled with powerful social imagery and gut-wrenching interpersonal scenes.
Crime and prison life form the backdrop for the two main things that give the movie depth. The first is obvious, maybe--race issues between blacks and skinhead whites in Venice Beach. It gets painfully oversimplified, maybe out of necessity in less than two hours, but it works well enough. The second is more important--the love and mutual admiration between two brothers. They are just kids, really, though Norton's role is very adult by the end. Their interactions are the best thing the movie has, and luckily they permeates everything, beginning to end.
Clichés in this kind of world might be inevitable in this kind of mainstream movie, but if the African Americans are especially cardboard in their depictions, Norton's portrayal of justified racism really chilling, and the interactions within his family complex and revealing. The other Hollywood plot elements are things you just have to go along with. The kinds of good guys and bad guys, suffering mother and angry sister, the prison culture and street culture, and even the use of guns everywhere are not far from some Italian-American mobster movie, and I suppose that's partly just the truth of it. But it also seems a little easy, a rewriting of a common set of circumstances.
Too common. Which is part of the point. You sometimes wish there wasn't a message to every movie like this--American History X is heavy on the moralizing--but the message is a slam dunk. The movie will leave you reeling.