American History X Review

Tony Kaye, a commercials director making his first feature, also shot it, and the black-and-white flashbacks of Derek at the height of his fervour are the images that stay: a basketball game played for territory, a family dinner that turns into a tirade about Rodney King, and the killings that send him to prison. The dinner is the best-written scene, because Elliott Gould's history teacher gives Derek someone to argue with, and the ideology becomes something a clever, angry young man talks himself into.

Norton earned his Oscar nomination. He makes Derek magnetic and repellent at once, and the change in him between the two timelines shows in his bearing before he says a word. The present-day story is weaker. The conversion in prison is compressed into one friendship and a few talks, the gap Mick LaSalle named at the time: the film shows him thinking his way in, not out. Edward Furlong is adequate as the brother, and the ending lands like a sermon. The production was a mess as well. Kaye disowned the cut New Line released, which Norton had helped shape, and asked to be credited as Humpty Dumpty.