Teenaged Danny Vinyard (Edward Furlong) has to write a report for his high school history class on book reflecting historical human rights, and knowing his teacher Mr. Murray (Elliott Gould) is Jewish, Danny chooses Mein Kampf. Naturally this nearly gets him expelled until the black principal Bob Sweeney (Avery Brooks) decides instead to give Danny a course called "American History X," his first assignment for which involves his elder brother Derek (Edward Norton). Several years earlier, black drug dealers murdered the boys' father and during a TV news interview immediately thereafter, Derek launched into a racist tirade. Derek then teamed up with local nonfiction author Cameron Alexander (Stacy Keach) to head an active branch of neo-Nazi skinheads and after killing two black teenagers who tried to steal his truck, Derek was sent to prison where he's now served three years. He's now made parole, and Danny, his girlfriend Stacey (Fairuza Balk) and former gang-members can't wait to see him again. But after all his prison experiences, and unexpectedly making friends in there with a black inmate (Guy Torry) he was assigned to partner with for work detail, Derek is unequivocally changed. Ashamed of his past, Derek must now race to save his family from the legacy of his crimes.
American History X is such an unflinching and authentic sociological cautionary tale that you may have to be in the right mood for it, but when you are it will be well worth it. Englishman (and rather fittingly a Jew) Tony Kaye, although he disowned the final cut after New Line Cinema and Norton (whom he clashed with during filming) re-edited it to their liking, proves that maybe the best director for subjects like racism in America is a non-American with an outsider's eye, showing brilliant intuition and objectivity with many black-and-white flashbacks and a grimy filmic language overall, along with a suitably WASP hard rock soundtrack. David McKenna's screenplay may seem filled with obscene, uneducated dialogue but that's why it's accurate because these are mostly meant to be trashy, working-class characters, and they are explosively played. Norton, who was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar, has never been better as he takes Derek from a take-no-prisoners white supremacist to an embodiment of desperation and remorse. Not to be outdone are Keach in a role for which none other than Marlon Brando was considered, and Beverly D'Angelo (yes, the wife and mum from the Vacation series) as his and Danny's unstable and guilty mother Doris. Also noteworthy are Kaye's sharp cinematography and Jerry Greenberg's and Alan Heim's relentless editing.
For all its on-set and post-production strife, as a story of a dysfunctional family and particularly two estranged brothers, a commentary on race in late-20th-century America or, perhaps most profoundly, a questioning of how deep regret and redemption can truly go, American History X very firmly makes its mark.
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