The Klansmen

Rating: 1/10 (17 September 2003)

****Spoilers*****
AHX begins and ends with violence committed by the African-Americans against the white people, mainly the neo-nazis of the film. IMO this creates a kind of frame for this film that got me thinking about another film with similar narrative and semantic problems. The D.W. Griffith film The Birth of Nation, aka. The Klansmen came to my mind and back when that film was made there really was racism around, and guess what, there still is. Everyone remembers the glorious battle scenes of Griffiths' film but how many remember the horribly racistic depiction of african american slaves portrayed in that film.
To me AHX suffers from the same symptom, trying to tell an epic story of some type but ultimately succumbing to racism because they simply hadn't done enough thinking about the subject matter that they had chosen. I really despise people who take everything that comes out of Hollywood as some kind of gospel that has to be studied and deified, IMO if it smacks of racism it's good to keep a distance to it. This film fails to say anything substancial about racism, it only succeeds in introducing the subject but it is as if the audience is being left waiting for a sequel, not because the original was so good but because the original failed to tell a good and complete story. And believe me, I have personally witnessed enough racism to know that one can easily make a really gripping and thoughtful film about racism, even without resorting to shock-tactics such as this film does.

This film reminds me of that tv-series Oz that tries so very hard to be 'topical' and 'philosophical' and 'gritty and in-your-face realistic' but fails to do any of them. Both, Oz and this film, only succeed in being a kind of soap opera that caters to the sick minds of the ones with an appetite for violence. Violence does not a story make.