Monday 22 July 2013

Stars: 3 / 10

Alternating between the extremes of boredom and glorified, gratuitous violence, this over-praised white power pukefest had its fate sealed by waaaay too many long-winded racial hate speeches (not at all entertaining to sit through), slow-motion overkill (what is this? VH1?), Furlong's squeaky narration (like nails on a chalkboard) and the occasional outbursts of ridiculously dramatic music (... they're just playing basketball. Seriously, settle down.) So much hype, so little to like.

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120586/?ref_=sr_1

Director: Tony Kaye
Year: 1998
Main Cast: Edward Norton, Edward Furlong, Beverly D'Angelo

Extended Review:

Neo-nazi's are crazy, scary, and mean. Duh. While this film tries to make some good points: "skinheads are bad and wrong", "racism is bad and wrong", it actually spends an enormous amount of time presenting the audience with a barrage of rabid white power hate speeches, physical violence against immigrants and minorities, and slow-mo glorification of a really hot, half naked nazi on a killing rampage... American History X preaches to the choir, and in my opinion, only serves to inflame viewers who might already have white supremacists ideology. This means that this film is fairly pointless, since the choir already knows the song: "Racism is evil"... and "Edward Norton is totally ripped!"

Although Norton's performance was amazing, as promised, he really does come off as crazy, scary, and mean, the scales are balanced by the incredibly disappointing performances from veterans Gould and D'Angelo. Whenever they had dialouge together, I was wincing and just hoping for the pain to go away. And oh look, it's "Nancy" from The Craft... and yeah, she's still battshit crazy.

A personal nod for Avery Brooks AND Jennifer Lien (happy Trekkie moment!) which, other than Edward Norton's beefcake, were the only things I really found likable about this movie.



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