Plot holes big enough to fly a 747 through

Rating: Null/10 (28 June 2001)

This could have been a good movie, if not for it's many many flaws and plot holes. 1. Cop-out edit on Norton's character escaping from the party. One minute he is running from an angry mob. A quick edit later, no mob. Total cop-out edit. 2. His gang would have known he broke ranks with the skinheads in prison when he got out. They would not have embraced him as their leader.
3. No one gets out of prison that early after murdering two people, one of them brutally, even if they do have the recommendation of a teacher/principle! If he would have gotten out in 10 years instead of 3, his brother would have been too grown up for the movie to work, so this was a convenient, but implausible, plot device. 4. Once he broke ranks, the black gang in prison would have killed him for what he did to get in there. There is no way the laundry boy could have prevented this from happening, if that is what we were supposed to believe.
5. Ridiculous score and slo-mo shots. Straight out of the Spielberg school of crap. 6. Terrible acting in some scenes, especially in the bathroom at the end.
7. The inconsistency of Norton's growing fondness for the laundry boy while simultaneously breaking ranks with the skinhead gang for doing business with another race. 8. No one from the skinhead gang came to pay retribution after he beat up their leader at the party, even though at least 2 of them knew where he lived. No one from the black gangs did anything as pay back for the murders either. 9. Norton's brother writing the paper serving as a narrative device. How absurd. Totally unnecessary. 10. The title of the movie. Where did the principle come up with "X"? Was he thinking, OK, I have to teach this kid myself, so that means I put an X at the end of the subject I'm teaching? Never mind that the paper wasn't really the subject of the movie. 11. The casting of Beverly D'Angelo as the hacking mother. There was no point to her token character, and what a stupid casting decision.

If this movie had been written based on actual human emotions and motivations, it would have been a totally different movie, maybe even a good one. I'm not suggesting it should have been about Norton struggling to escape gangs coming at him from every direction, though in the right hands, even that would have been a better movie than this. There are just so many ways they could have taken this, so many ways it could have been truly unique and original. Too bad it was just another piece of Hollywood garbage. Hard to believe how many posters on this site called it "powerful". No wonder the director wanted his name removed from it.