Thug Chic

By RICHARD CORLISS

With a swastika tattooed on his left pec and a gaudy line of rage against minorities, Derek Vinyard (Edward Norton) is the very model of a modern neo-Nazi--the model, at least, to his doting younger brother Danny (Edward Furlong). While Derek simmers in jail for killing two black malefactors, Danny gets the evil message. He writes a paper on Mein Kampf, shaves his head and becomes a good little Hitler youth. Monkey see...

American History X, a confused, randomly compelling family melodrama, is at the center of a Hollywood controversy--not, so far, over its grim subject matter but over the firing of director Tony Kaye during editing. Thus it's hard to know whom to blame for the film's choppiness, its mixture of rage and sentimentality, the stridency of some of the acting.

Kaye, a Brit who shoots the film with familiar pizazz (low-angle shots, portentous slo-mo, some black-and-white scenes), made his name directing TV commercials in Europe. What's not clear is the product on sale here. It seems to be brotherhood among the races. But David McKenna's script is either cunningly ambiguous or desperately muddled. In racially torn Venice Beach, Calif., the neo-Nazis are pathetic lowlifes, crying out for our contempt. And of course Nazism is a thug ideology. Yet much of the film's violence is committed by blacks; most of the victims are white. So what's the moral?

The moral is as old as South Pacific: you've got to be taught to hate. Derek's father makes racist remarks, so the liberal-minded lad turns into a neo-Nazi; then Derek sees his beliefs are wrong, so skinhead Danny does too. It's nice that today's kids are so easily swayed by their elders. Or is it? Monkey see...

--By Richard Corliss