American History X
USA 1998
Reviewed by Andrew O'Hehir
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Derek Vinyard, the former leader of a white, racist, skinhead gang in Venice Beach, Los Angeles, is being released from prison after serving three years for manslaughter. While Derek has been away, his younger brother Danny, also a skinhead, has been torn between two men: Dr Sweeney, a black high-school principal; and Cameron, a local neo-Nazi leader. The Vinyards' father, a firefighter with racist views, was shot and killed years earlier in a black neighbourhood. At Cameron's urging, Derek organised the disgruntled white youths of Venice Beach into a violent gang who committed hate crimes. Before the killings, Derek alienated his mother and sister. Only Danny still sees him as a hero.
On Derek's release, Cameron, Danny and the other skinheads assume Derek will retake control of the gang. But Derek was betrayed and raped by neo-Nazis in prison, and was then befriended by a black prisoner. He has abandoned his racist views. He agrees to work with Dr Sweeney and the police to save Danny from the gang. Derek attends a skinhead gathering, beats up Cameron and escapes. He convinces Danny to leave the gang, but the next day, on his way to school, Danny is shot and killed by a black student he had confronted the day before.
Review
This is an easy movie to make fun of - in virtually the first scene, skinhead Danny protests when a teacher threatens to fail Danny's essay, "Oh, come on, Sweeney! It took me a week to read Mein Kampf! It's not fair!" Elsewhere, characters tend to speak as if they were members of a college debating society or, in the case of Avery Brooks' high-school principal Sweeney, as if they were narrating a melodramatic novel. ("Cameron Alexander found in Derek his shining prince," he tells the cops.) Almost as much time is spent exploring Danny's older brother Derek's hate-filled past in arty, portentous black-and-white flashbacks as in the flat Pacific light of the film's more naturalistic present tense. And are we really expected to believe that a pack of skinheads could come up with a creed as colourful as: "I believe in death, destruction, chaos, filth and greed"?
Despite all that, and despite the wrangle over director Tony Kaye's efforts to remove his name from the finished product, American History X is a work of impressive scale and craft and not a movie that's easy to dismiss in the end. Its structure, storytelling method and emotional goals resemble those of grand opera. It seeks to link a simplistic, almost mythic tragedy of brotherhood and sacrifice to a set of powerful, non-verbal tableaux. The comic-book story of American History X comes to seem less important than the extraordinary image-making as Kaye's scenes gather cumulative force. The cinematographer as well as the director here, former director of advertisements Kaye has a gift for arresting compositions. What we remember is the sudden, kinetic explosion of Derek and his masked goons into a supermarket where they terrorise the Latino staff; the eerie clarity of the horrifying scene in which Derek kills a would-be car thief; and the documentary realism of the enormous outdoor skinhead gathering at which Derek confronts neo-Nazi leader Cameron.
If Edward Norton's Oscar-nominated performance is the film's magnetic centre - Derek often seems to glow with an insane inner luminescence, like a new Charles Manson - we could do without the clumsy efforts of David McKenna's script to provide the character with specific psychological anchors. To suggest Derek becomes a racist because his father delivers a bigoted dinner-table speech before dashing off to be killed, and then reforms because one black prisoner does him a favour, is reductive to the point of inanity. At its best, American History X reaches for a richer, more ambiguous notion of evil as an insidious force that's almost impossible to keep at bay. But whatever Kaye and McKenna's intentions may have been, Derek seems to be essentially the same arrogant jerk after his release from prison as he was before. Only his ideology has changed, and that's not enough to keep his family from tumbling over the tragic precipice.
For my money, the finest performance here comes from Edward Furlong as the sweet, bright and easily manipulated Danny, a boy both eager to please his morally upright black teacher and the moronic Venice Beach neo-Nazi leader (an enjoyable cameo role for Stacy Keach). The excellent supporting cast also includes Fairuza Balk as Derek's sycophantic girlfriend; Ethan Suplee as a beefy small-minded skinhead lieutenant; and Guy Torry as Derek's black workmate in prison. Beverly D'Angelo merits a special mention for her restraint as Derek and Danny's coughing mother, possibly suffering from emphysema (an operatic character if ever there was one). In a film whose memorable atmospherics are probably its primary virtue, the clutter and claustrophobia of white-trash Californian poverty are captured with startling accuracy.
Credits
- Producer
- John Morrissey
- Screenplay
- David McKenna
- Director of Photography
- Tony Kaye
- Editors
- Jerry Greenberg
- Alan Heim
- Production Designer
- Jon Gary Steele
- Music
- Anne Dudley
- © New Line Productions, Inc
- Production Companies
- New Line Cinema presents a Turman-Morrissey Company production
- Executive Producers
- Lawrence Turman
- Steve Tisch
- Kearie Peak
- Bill Carraro
- Co-executive Producers
- Michael De Luca
- Brian Witten
- Co-producers
- Jon Hess
- David McKenna
- Executive in Charge of Production
- Carla Fry
- Production Executive
- Erik Holmberg
- Production Associate
- Susan Hart
- Production Supervisor
- Michael Mandaville
- Production Controller
- Paul Prokop
- Production Co-ordinator
- Wendy Cox
- In-house Co-ordinator
- Emily Glatter
- Unit Production Manager
- Bill Carraro
- Location Manager
- Marc Spiegel
- Post-production
- Executive in Charge of:
- Joe Fineman
- Supervisor:
- Diana Kaufman
- Co-ordinator:
- Brandon Smith
- Assistant Directors
- Mark Cotone
- David Larson
- Michael Keller
- Script Supervisor
- Ira Hurvitz
- Casting
- Valerie McCaffrey
- Camera Operator/Steadicam
- Charles Papert
- Special Effects Supervisor
- Thomas Bellissimo
- Special Effects
- Charles Belardinelli
- Shannon Thompson
- Jerry Donegan
- Christy Sumner
- Malia Hompson
- Art Directors
- Daniel Olexiewicz
- James Kyler Black
- Set Decorator
- Tessa Posnansky
- Head Scenic Artist
- Sharleen Bright
- Scenic Artist
- Steven E. Eyrse
- Costume Designer
- Doug Hall
- Costume Supervisor
- Marisa Aboitiz
- Make-up
- Supervising Key:
- Christina Smith
- John E. Jackson
- Artist:
- Heather Fraker
- Body Artist:
- Gina Rylander
- Special Effects:
- Matthew W. Mungle
- Supervising Key Hairstylist
- Judy Alexander-Cory
- Hairstylist
- Karyn Huston
- Wig Maker
- Bill Fletcher
- Main Titles Design
- Goodspot
- Opticals
- Howard Anderson Co
- Music Performed by
- Bulge
- Band Members:
- Marc Cancel
- Stanley Mueller
- Christopher Rensink
- Keith Swan
- Orchestra Leader
- Gavyn Wright
- Music Co-ordinator
- Karen Elliott
- Music Executive/Supervisor
- Paul Broucek
- Music Editor
- Richard Ford
- Scoring Mixer
- Paul Hulme
- Additional Engineering
- Roger Dudley
- Sound Design
- Frederick Howard
- Production Sound Mixer
- Steve Nelson
- Re-recording Mixers
- John Ross
- Joe Barnett
- Bill Smith
- Yuri Reese
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Frederick Howard
- Backgrounds Editors
- Michael Mullane
- Benjamin Cook
- Dialogue Editors
- Walter Spencer
- David Grant
- Robert McNabb
- Steve Scoville
- Jed Dodge
- Sound Effects Editors
- Javier Bennassar
- Cormac Funge
- Roland Thai
- Dorian Cheah
- ADR
- Supervisor:
- Susan Shin
- Loop Group:
- L.A. MadDogs
- Mixer:
- Alan Freedman
- Foley
- Artists:
- Ossama Khuluki
- Diane Marshall
- David Lee Fein
- Mixers:
- Mary Erstad
- Lucy Sustar
- Editors:
- Craig Jurkiewicz
- David Mann
- Stunt Co-ordinators
- Ernie Orsatti
- Noon Orsatti
- Denney Pierce
- Paul Short
- Animal Trainer
- Silvie Rodriguez
- Helicopter Pilot
- Kevin LaRosa
- Cast
- Edward Norton
- Derek Vinyard
- Edward Furlong
- Danny Vinyard
- Fairuza Balk
- Stacey, Derek's girlfriend
- Stacy Keach
- Cameron Alexander
- Jennifer Lien
- Davina Vinyard
- Elliott Gould
- Murray, Doris's paramour
- William Russ
- Dennis Vinyard
- Ethan Suplee
- Seth
- Joe Cortese
- Rasmussen
- Guy Torry
- Lamont
- Giuseppe Andrews
- Jason
- Antonio David Lyons
- Lawrence
- Keram Malicki-Sanchez
- Chris
- Jordan Marder
- Curtis
- Nicholas Oleson
- huge Aryan
- Anne Lambton
- Cassandra
- Avery Brooks
- Dr Robert Sweeney, principal
- Beverly D'Angelo
- Doris Vinyard
- Jason Bose-Smith
- little Henry
- Alex Sol
- Mitch McCormick
- Michelle Christine White
- Lizzy
- Jonathan Fowler Jr
- Jerome
- Chris Masterson
- Daryl Dawson
- Paul LeMat
- McMahon
- Tommy L. Bellissimo
- cop 2
- Cherish Lee
- Kammi
- Sam Vlahos
- Doctor Aguilar
- Tara Blanchard
- Ally
- Steve Wolford
- reporter
- Richard Noyce
- desk sergeant
- Danso Gordon
- buddy 1
- Jim Norton
- Randy
- David Basulto
- guard
- Alexis Rose Coen
- young Ally
- Kiante Elam
- Lawrence's partner
- Paul Hopkins
- student
- Keith Odett
- random skinhead
- Paul Short
- stocky buddy
- Nigel Miguel
- basketball player
- Certificate
- 18
- Distributor
- Entertainment Film Distributors Ltd
- 10,682 feet
- 118 minutes 42 seconds
- Dolby
- Colour/Prints by
- DeLuxe