Not all that it's cracked up to be...disappointing.

Rating: 7/10 (6 February 2004)

Derrick Vinyard (Norton) is thrown in jail because he brutally murdered two black men one fateful evening when they tried to steal his car. He is a monster of a Nazi and is quite well known around the community as such. While in prison, Derek has had time to think and he realizes that his reasons for believing in what he does are complete and total frauds. His younger brother Danny (Furlong) seems to be heading down the same path. Can Derek convince his brother to change his ways before it's too late?
Ed Norton deserves all the credit he receives as a talented actor, and he definitely shows off his skills here. It's hard to believe that he's the same skinny weakling that he portrayed in Fight Club. He's a big muscle bound monster filled with hate for the first portion of the film and is then transformed into a man that has seen the light and faults in his ways. Top notch actor. Edward Furlong, despite being in only a few films, also shows off his acting abilities...however, neither one of them could save this film.
Minor Spoilers:
The premise of the movie itself would make it worthy of being in the Top 250, however it has serious flaws in execution and especially the script, as it's filled with entirely unbelievable situations. Too bad because I really wanted to like this one. Nazis playing basketball with local black gangs? Um, yeah m'kay? But a bigger flaw has to be Derek's reasons for having the beliefs he does and the reasons he changed them. His racist beliefs stem from his father's dislike for minorities and from his death in which he is killed by black people while trying to put out a fire in a crackhouse. The latter is believable but the look into his father's beliefs in the dinner scene was entirely unnecessary and laughable at best. Once in the slammer, he makes friends with a black inmate who enlightens Derek's view by telling him sex jokes. And although Derek has had the Nazi beliefs he has had for many years, a simple joke or two and getting rammed in the bootay by fellow Nazis in prison sway his opinion to the opposite. It could happen right?
The ending was what really put me off though and is the main reason why the movie showed itself, to me, to be pretentious. It would have made infinitely more sense had Derek been killed, but having Danny killed for simply blowing smoke in some black kids face is a serious flaw concocted by the makers, and is again, unbelievable. It makes me wonder what they actually thought when they first read the script. I guess they figured it would blow the audience away as there would be no way for them to foresee the final events. I believe that most people fell for this simple trick and is most of the reason why this film has such a lofty rating here at IMDB. Ideally, Danny's life should have been spared for Derek's redemption. Sure, it would've been a "happy" ending, but what we are left with is much worse. Groan.
This film left me very disappointed as I was looking forward to it's story and had heard many good things about it. However, the movie is simply not believable. A movie dealing with real issues needs to be, I don't know, more realistic.
Great acting, decent camera work, but terrible script.

Generously, 7/10