American History X (1998) Review

All you got to do is put the mediums with the mediums and the large with the large. All right, I know it's a borin' job, but it's better than that last shit they had me doin'. I spent two years in the kitchen scrubbing hot ass pots and pans. That you don't want to do, alright?

Black-and-white scenes, mostly gripping, tell the rise and fall of a young neo-nazi. In one scene he fires up his goons to storm an ethnic grocer with rhetoric that could easily serve as the opening act at a Trump rally. Edward Norton's menacing energy muscles through his lightly sketched-out white power knuckleheads. It's not always perfectly taut. A beefy, swastika'd, Norton punctuates a shirts vs skinsheads with a soaring reverse jam. I don't know about all that!

The present day in-color scenes, however, too often tell a too-tidy redemption story, despite the misfire of an ending. Bridging the two halves together is the scene-stealing Guy Torry, who helps Captain Benjamin Sisko 'cure' Norton of his racism behind bars, only to positively disappear after the story no longer needs him. The real-world answer of how to pull someone out of a spiral of hate is a lot trickier than how to pull them in, so perhaps the film's struggle on the same theme isn't surprising.