Wildly variable quality, but fascinating and gripping

Rating: 7/10 (1 September 1999)

Suggests the devil has the best tunes: the portrayal of Norton's immersion in the movement is scintillating, conveying both the visceral excitement and his fearsome articulacy and the sexy physicality it gives him - the scene where the dinner-table discussion of Rodney King grows into a brutal attack on Gould is painful to watch. At such times the sleek, visually punchy style draws you right in and is all the more mesmerizing for the repulsive nature of the identification. But the movie has way more problems with the other side of the argument. The prison scenes are reasonable enough, if too reliant on a single amiable black guy as a positive influence on Norton, but Furlong's personal journey makes far less sense - the performance is blank and he doesn't have half the space to explain or demonstrate himself. The closing stretches are messy and disappointing. The social fabric of racism is barely touched on (easily the worst scene is the clunky flashback to the racist dad) and the movie's "anti" argument consists mainly of assertions about racists being sad, time-wasting assholes. Despite this wildly variable quality, it was one of the more fascinating and gripping movies of its year.