Thinks it's a lot deeper than it actually is

Rating: Null/10 (28 July 2004)

I first watched this film a few years ago, but only got about fifty minutes in (after the bit where the hero/antihero crushes the black guy's skull on the kerb) because I had taped it off the TV and the video tape ran out. I thought it looked like a pretty decent movie, but could wait until it was on the TV again.
I finally got to borrow the complete video a few weeks back and saw the rest of the movie and, unfortunately, I wasn't impressed.
This is a film that's got its head stuck so far up its backside that it completely misses the point. The message I took away was: "If you're a neo-Nazi then you're either going to be: a) buttf**ked by another, bigger, neo-Nazi, or b) shot by a black guy. So don't be a neo-Nazi."
This is crap! I bet plenty of narrow-minded white supremacist types are having a pretty good time. The real issue is how this kind of behaviour affects ethnics - an aspect of hate crime that this film totally fails to explore, except during the "sweetener" parts of the film - latino woman in the shop being physically abused by the Nazi thugs, the mouth-on-the-kerb thing, etc. These despicable scenes - presumably why all the closet racists out there rave about this film - are totally unnecessary, and if you have to have them at all, why not explore the effects of this violence on the victims?
The "revelatory" bit at the end, with the late father talking about "n!gger bullsh!t", didn't make sense to me. The guy makes one comment over the dinner table and so his son - years later - decides to become a Nazi?
Or was it supposed to suggest that the family were regularly getting this kind of crap from the head of the household, in which case perhaps it would have been a better film to have shown a racist dad bringing up a family and turning his children into a bunch of f**k-ups!
This film does nothing to improve race relations. Its message is clearly "don't be a racist for your own sake", which clearly appeals to many self-centred people who were brought up during the look-out-for-yourself Reagan-Thatcher years.
Nicely shot, yes. Good acting, yes. But a terrible script delivering the wrong message!