Great film with great flaws

Rating: 9/10 (5 May 1999)

This is a great film which is unfortunately tainted with mistaken leftist/liberal explanations. The father passes on his "conservatism" to his son, who then turns into a neo-Nazi when his father is murdered. It's as obvious as can be that it supposed to mean that conservatives can turn into Nazis. Listen to the son's rational--and correct--explanations at the dinner table as he debates his fuzzy-minded, knee-jerk liberal opponents. And then all of a sudden--blam! He goes completely nuts. Rightists are violent, crazy racists! Oops--a few problems. "Nazi" means "National Socialist." They were leftists, not rightists. If the film had been honest it would have blamed the neo-Nazi movement as a response to the liberal/socialist programs in this country that fragment people into primitive, racial, ethnic tribes. Yet, for all its mistaken premises, this is still a great film, one of the most powerful I have ever seen.