Antagonistic and ruffling but all but deeply involving American drama; a forceful and affecting character piece really worth seeing.

Rating: 7/10 (28 June 2011)

Told amidst a furry of tough flashbacks and present tense broiling drama, through an array of colour footage and black and white hues, Tony Kaye's American History X devilishly explores the life of a Neo-Nazi, both pre-and-post-incarceration, as well as his suffering family in a bare and unrelenting fashion. We dislike the opening of the film, we dislike the opening of Kaye's film on the basis that it is ugly and frank; we dislike the fact that we are challenged to process not only the apparent ugliness of the sexual content but the Nazi infused props littering the screen, and are forced into calculating which of those leaves the nastier taste. We dislike the fact that, next door in a room of his own, is situated a young boy seemingly forced into possessing a building with such a person complete with such activity going on in such close proximity. We side with the boy, and are somewhat forced against our wishes into sympathising with all of those whom inhabit the house when a group of blank, faceless African-Americans plot outside to sabotage the car on the driveway – and all of this before the really nasty bit happens.
It is to the credit of those behind American History X that they are able to take the project from these beginnings and to do what they do; the film much more than a freak show unfolding in a cesspool of crudity and violence - the film refusing to allow its powerful opening to act as its dramatic high point, instead allowing the transitions it documents to act as its key source of drama, in what is a pleasurable and really rather involving thriller about changing attitudes and the dangers of influence. Those primarily involved in the opening are that of Edward Furlong's Danny, the boy in his room, and that of his older brother Derek, played by Edward Norton. They are siblings of the Vinyard family, the pair of them two Los Angeles based brothers. Danny is a high school student; Derek is something a little different, but they share the pain of their father's death, following the falling foul of a black individual, and maintain ties to their mother who's trying to maintain a new relationship.
Danny raises eyebrows at school after doing a school paper that is a riff on Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, something which causes great concern amidst his peers. Elliott Gould's character Murray, Danny's history teacher, is worried of the possibility he may follow down a route similar to that of his brother; the verbal outlining of whom shortly follows as the severity of Norton's character is built up, a speech which documents the man's history to do with formulating a national front along with some other radical thinkers that concludes with the fact he is about to be released from prison following a three year stretch. Despite the severity of Murray's outlining, Norton's Derek later appears somewhat chilled upon release; cool at the fact his younger brother has moved up into some echelons more broadly resembling that of where Derek himself was at a similar age. It is a reaction, and whose general behaviour, goes against prior perceptions; particularly when interacting with his fascist friend of old in Seth (Suplee), whom looks up to Derek and half-expects him, along with the rest of a neo-Nazi front that has formulated, to really lead them to where they want to go.
Kaye's film will dart back and forth from some relatively tough sequences motivated by hatred and racism to the current tense of reform. Shot in black and white, and holding very little back, Derek's earlier times of violence and antagonism carry with them a cutting, biting aesthetic; a prominent sense of the content always being on the move sewn into proceedings, whether induced by the man's motivational speeches encouraging hate and anti-social behaviour, shortly before the playing out of such things, or the more visually dramatic sequences such as that of a basketball match between two teams that has some high stakes. Derek's post-incarceration exchanges, shot in colour, but still looking as if drained, although successfully coming across as glorious Technicolour in comparison to the rancid black and white, appear calmer; more laid-back and are not motivated by causality as much. Kaye's compositions during these segments additionally appear to open up a little more, allowing for more room to breath and for those of foreign nationalities, or varying other ethnicities, to share the frame a little more – when, nearer the end, Danny is escorted to school by his brother, we notice those of an African American or Hmong ilk milling around in the background, as if invited to occupy the film's frame with the two leads as a collective one such is the newfound sense of acceptance.
The film's starker sequences indeed carry with them great adrenaline and a sense of the perversely engaging, the aforementioned basketball sequence one of many that additionally includes the trashing of a local store now owned by some Koreans as well as a grotesquely violent act during the opening. In spite of this, the film maintains such an aggressive and pent-up attitude for the sequences in which Derek confronts his past neo-Nazi accomplices; a lesser film made in a lesser fashion might have, purposely or otherwise, done well, in a negative sense, to fetishise such sequences of hate and shoot the gradual inclination toward a newer order in a drabber fashion. Another instance might have seen the content played safe, a film distancing itself from such sequences of bigotry before constructing the demonisation process in a self-important manner threatening to mutate the piece into some kind of lecture. Kaye impressively, purposely or otherwise, blows through the material in an equal on-both-fronts-fashion; maintaining a dogged grip on dramatic proceedings as controversial content is executed and hate at those the lead previously shared times with is unfolded. Regardless, the film is tough but engaging and worth seeing.