Strong performances, weak script. (minor spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (16 June 2000)

I am completely dumbfounded as to why I'm seeing all of these comments summarizing this film as, "Best film of 98'", "Powerful", or "Oscar worthy film"; please, the only oscar worthy aspect of this film is Edward Norton's performance! I mean AMX is a strong gripping film, but we aren't exactly talking "Citizen Kane" here.
The plot is pretty mediocre: The prodigal son returns to keep his younger brother from following down the same tracks; but will he succeed? Well, I'm not going to spoil it for those who're still out of the loop, but suffice to say you can see the arbitrary ending coming halfway through the film. The moral? Everyone knows the moral of the film even before the opening credits roll: "Hate Kills!" nuff said.
Many of the conflicts involving minorities appeared to have been shoehorned. For instants, there's a sequence here where trio of trouble makers pay a late night visit to Norton's place to seek revenge on a lousy basketball game of all things. On top of that, all of the blacks (with the exception of Avery Brooks' character) were portrayed in the worse possible light: jive talkin', foul mouthin', chest-thumping all the way through. I guess this was to give Norton's crew and every other closet racist out there justification for their twisted ideals, "You see Martha! you see how they act!"
As earlier mentioned, performances all around were rather good, however, Jennifer Lien--despite her good performance seemed out of place. I don't know... I can't quite put my finger on it, but she was rather out of sync with the whole trailer trash family unit (that's a complement by the way).
Rating: 6