American History X

Rating:
Summary: Mixed Signals
Review: For however brilliantly this film depicts skinhead culture/rhetoric, and relationships between family members, I feel that the messages too often come out wrong and confused.
Dereky Vinyard's typical right-wing rhetoric will sound very convincing to confused teenagers, which is the point of the film. We can see exactly how he gets such a loyal following, but his cases for racism are so convincing at times that I feel this movie doesn't do a good enough job to cut them down. I think the ending is one of the most disgraceful cop-outs in film history. Instead of using compelling evidence to counterstrike Derek's points, all we get is a simple-minded "racism is bad" stance. The case for racism is made much stronger than the case against it.
Also adding to the confusion are scenes that seem to serve no purpose other than to provide racist comedic relief: the scene with the fat skinhead singing in his van (actually, all the fat skinhead scenes...character/actor name escapes me at the moment). Also, the more horrifying and brutal violence against minorities happens to those in the film you have difficulty sympathizing with. The infamous "curb" scene for instance--as ugly as it is, it sits in an almost grey area because the victim is established as a criminal, car thief. Mean while, an innocent black woman only gets pinned down and has food poured on her. Anyone know what "white wash" means?
I think Tony Kaye and all the actors did incendiary jobs of portraying convincing, by Hollywood standard, young white supremecists, but there are just too many mixed signals coming out of this movie for me to really embrace it as an anti-hate film.