# American History X (1998)

### reviewed by
Eric Vinegart

    "American History X"
    By Eric Vinegärt

    *** (R)
    Derek Vinyard:  Edward Norton II
    Danny Vinyard:  Edward Furlong
    Doris Vinyard:  Beverly D'Angelo
    Cameron Alexander:  Stacy Keach
    Bob Sweeney:  Avery Brooks
    Seth:  Ethan Suplee
    Lamont:  Guy Torrey

Directed by Tony Kaye. Written by David McKenna. Running time: 118 minutes. Rated R (for graphic brutal violence, including rape, pervasive language, strong sexuality and nudity).

Tempe, AZ -- "American History X" is one of those movies riddled with problems that somehow escapes the benefit of audience testing and is released anyway. I wasn't too amused with all the confusing scene shifts from past to present tense, only to recover by recall from memory to keep things together (very distracting). Without the movie's change from color to black-and-white and Derek's change from hair to skinhead, we would've all been lost. And the script has issues running in different directions without really gluing them together, and we're not totally certain of a focused theme. The investors must be really pissed that some lame-ass didn't put all the money in the right places, and probably spent a lot instead on self-aggrandizing expenditures. Standard fare for a lot of dweebs in drug-infested Tinsel town today, I'm sure, where a lot of production never quite makes it off the ground.

As is the case with any highly publicized movie, lots of reviews get written (those advertising dollars build fires under people's asses), and after reading many of them, I was left wanting more, as I felt I wanted after watching the movie. I longed to see if any critic delved into the deep reaches that this theme explores, and read first-hand the message I felt that came through loudest for me while viewing "American History X". But not one did, and most critics sang the same old tune, which was to summarize the story, comment on the special-effects crap, the actors and their dimension, dialogue, score, cinematography, and how much or how hard the sex was and all the other stuff to ad nauseam. Like me, you probably are looking to see what others have to say about this movie, and you already know all the trivia shit. And we want a little more meat.

The most pivotal point in the movie is during a flashback when Derek (Edward Norton II) is in the prison laundry with Lamont, the black, stand-up comic inmate (Guy Torrey). We already know how much hate Derek has had, given his father was killed by black drug addicts, and dinner-table indoctrination against the evils of affirmative action. When Lamont gives Derek direction on how to treat a woman so as not to lose her while in the joint, each word punctuated with a sex-act stroke (belly-laugh funny), the spectacle is too much for Derek to remain angry any more and he can't help laugh with what must surely be the first time ever with a black person. We witness a friendship form here, and when Derek finds out Lamont got six years for stealing a television, Norton's superb acting convinces us that his character no longer believes the enemy to be blacks, Koreans, border jumpers, and illegal Hispanics, but instead a corrupt economic and social system collapsing under its own weight.

At this point in the movie I expect and want a hero to rise up against the real enemy -- the individuals responsible for corruption -- and set out on a search-and-destroy mission. But that doesn't happen. Even though we have had superb character transformation and motivation, Derek doesn't want to go on to do anything except turn on his followers and try to save only his own ass and his brother. We really are cheated from what could become a greater movie.

There are problems telling stories about racism, the same as with politics and religion (and now feminism, too). We don't get to see the true cause of Derek's hatred, which has less to do with his father who was killed by blacks, and more with a society top-heavy with blood-sucking parasites who skim all the cream from the top, leaving the rest of us to fight over what is left. In a world of plenty, people don't argue over anything. When was the last time we heard of a feud between fat-cats? Jews and Hispanics in Hollywood don't fight. Neither do black and white athletes with seven-figure incomes. But they do in real life where competition and slimmer pickings can mean you come up short. Or when it means you get beat out of a job to a border-jumper.

Problems today in society are so monumental, barely one person is left who still sees real truth. It's designed this way on purpose, the same as SWAT teams use stun bombs to confuse and catch hostage-takers off guard. Our government does not want us to rise up against their insane policies, much less find out, least they again experience Viet Nam-era riots throughout the land. I'm left wanting "American History X" and Derek to pound home this message, but they don't.

Television is replete with newscasts daily of celebrity or professional athletes who enter drug-treatment centers. And how many are ever convicted for possession and sentenced to twenty years in prison? America has a near-one-million felons in prison on drug offenses, and barely a single one is a celebrity or of wealth. This is real injustice, and for one in which we want a Derek to rise up and unite all against.

Racism has more origin in a corrupt and unfair system, than it does with any dislike that one class of people may have for another. Like drinking-and-driving accidents produce hit-and-run felons, because the consequences for accountability are so severe, corporations no longer have compassion for employees because it's too expensive and the consequences too grave -- bankruptcy. And so, in a system where it's every-man-for-himself mentality, justification for our capacity to step on our fellow man is easy in a world with a press eager to help demonize the poor who must now, just to survive, resort to theft, deception and crime, and who most always are black, border-jumpers and poor.

While "American History X" depicts an over-crowded America replete with exploiting free-loading border-jumpers and unemployed blacks, it fails to bring the real problem into focus. We sense that Derek sees through all the bullshit and now knows the real enemies, profit-seeking structures and tax-fed organizations, which can no longer flourish without a growing consumer base to draw from and sell to. And so borders are left open and families (and single women) are encouraged, allowed, even motivated to multiply as quickly as biology allows. Naturally, as with any activity that makes money, Madison Avenue successfully dupes mothers to produce at breeder-cow rate, using slick pictures and detailed copy instructions in big-circulation magazines and sit-com TV shows, and little if any thought is ever given to the horrible consequence for offspring in an already over-crowded, over-used world.

Overall, "American History X" is still a fair movie. But its producers blew a wonderful opportunity to make a statement for the origins of racism, and leave a warm fuzzy feeling as was so eloquently done in, for example, "Billy Jack" and "To Sir With Love". A script going in a different direction from Derek's transformation would have helped solve this problem.

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