A tremendous disappointment

Rating: 5/10 (29 November 2005)

Great casting, excellent acting, marvelous cinematography. Truly, a finely-crafted film.
Unfortunately, all of this wonderful story-telling expertise is used to tell a story that is as satisfying as one that ends with "and then the little boy fell out of bed and woke up".
*** MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW *** The "moral" of this story is, apparently, that it's racist to stand up to bullies if they're African-American, and it'll get you shot - and it'll be the fault of your racist older brother, because he led you down a skinhead path.
The skinheads are portrayed as remarkably unlovely people. It's true - racism is ugly, and it's possible that skinheads are that badly over the top in their social skills and attitude. But the cinematic debate that is the heart of this film is remarkably one-sided. We are not shown examples that disprove the racial stereotypes examined, we're shown examples of the people with legitimate complaints over-reacting, or degenerating into absurd complaints.
This movie examines race relations in the USA - and Ghu knows that they need to be looked at. Racism is a real problem. Pointing a finger at white extremists is not going to be effective - looking at all aspects of the problem may help, though it may be less comfortable. It's a complex problem - the simple source that this movie looks at does little to illuminate that. In portraying the wrong-headedness of white supremacists while glossing over their legitimate complaints, the movie becomes racist itself.
For a far better movie that examines this problem, I highly recommend Crash, which can be seen at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0375679/