American History X (Wide Screen)

Advantages: Engaging and compelling story
Disadvantages: Violent and shocking...

...fact that this is an American film located in the notoriously racist Los Angeles, would suggest that Hollywood believes America still has a huge problem with racism, but my current fear is the extent that this is becoming rife within the UK, with more and more racially motivated attacks occurring in towns and cities across the country. The recent mindless and shocking murder of schoolboy Anthony Walker in Huyton, Liverpool was a stark and upsetting ...
...be. I share the opinion of another reviewer I saw some time ago on this film, and that is that both the good guys and bad guys are easily recognisable in the film. All the bad guys are cigarette chain-smokers, with obesity problems, and marked from head to two in tattoos. Oh, and they may guzzle a fair amount of alcohol too. On the flip side, the good guys are usually English teachers, budding writers / teachers, who are trying to right the world ... Read review

Advantages: explicit, brilliant dilaogue, dareing view.
Disadvantages: ending

"Racists are so stupid. Hating people just because they're black. We're all the same underneath" What is revealed in this film is that often nothing could be further than the truth- often racists and members of hate groups are frighteningly intelligent. Intelligence in the sense of being very selective about what they read and learn which supports their viewpoint. There are many racist lectures given by Ed Norton's character, Derek Vinyard which ...
...whilst net surfing, or even watching Newsnight interviewing Nick Griffin, head of the British Nationalist Party of racists, thugs and conmen who are trying to pass themselves off as a respectable electable political party. Describing affirmative action conspiracies, how racist comments should be protected under the Constitutional rights to free speech, the high statistics of crime committed by African Americans in proportion to how they are a comparatively ... Read review

Advantages: Remarkable story, great acting
Disadvantages: Necessarally violent and ugly

...until 1998, when Kaye made American History X that he gained focus from the film industry. Unfortunately, the attention he received was not entirely positive. After production of the film, Kaye took out a $275 million lawsuit against New Line and the Directors Guild because they had refused to allow him to use a pseudonym (Humpty Dunpty) on the film credits. His reason for this was a reluctance to be associated with the film after Edward Norton edited ...
...it. Since directing American History X Kaye has directed Snowblind in 2002 and is working on two further films, Paranoia to be released this year and A Private War due to be released in 2007. Kaye also directed the music video, Dani California for the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. ***What's American History X all about*** American History X tells the story of Derek Vinyard played by Edward Norton. It takes place shortly after the Los Angelas race riots ... Read review

Advantages: The DVD gives three extra scenes, subtitles,yours forever
Disadvantages: UK prices always higher then Americas!

In around 1968/69 I lived in Fort Walton Beach Florida. This was at the time of the de-segregation of blacks and whites. I had not lived in America that long at the time and for this reason I was not aware of the problems there had been in the South. I remember seeing bus loads of black children all stood on the curb waiting to be emptied and I was surprised to see police cars surrounding them. I didn't know the reason for it at the time. There ...
...the buses. I walked over to the area to see what was happening and was in time to see the buses open their doors to let off their passengers. What happened next I could not believe. The whites who had been shouting so much attacked the kids disembarking from the buses. With baseball bats, hammers, crowbars and lumps of wood, they hit out at those poor kids. Most were around my age but some were older. Fighting broke out as these poor people tried ... Read review

Advantages: See review
Disadvantages: See review

...on as it is in American History X. Centred on the lives of Derek and Danny Vinyard, it is undoubtedly a vicious and merciless tragedy, intended as much to shock the viewer as to educate them. Edward Norton is Derek, an intelligent young skinhead and leader of a group of wannabe-Nazis, convicted of murder after executing two young black men for trying to steal his car in one of the single most memorable, sickening and twisted scenes in Cinema, ever. ...
...to follow in his footsteps, being sucked into the same traps and groups. The film is shot in both black and white and colour, the black and white scenes being those in the past, most notably Derek's early life, and the colour scenes being the current events as they unfold. Derek's first love, maybe his only one, if for his family. His chronically ill mother has been left to look after the family alone, after Derek's father, a fireman, was shot and ... Read review