Film review: 'American History X'
As if the subject matter wasn't controversial enough -- a family in crisis because of two brothers' involvement with a neo-Nazi gang -- New Line's "American History X" arrives with a creative imbroglio between tyro director Tony Kaye and the studio over final cut of the modestly budgeted project, with star Edward Norton also involved in the verbal fisticuffs.
Whether or not this is the best version of English commercial director and art provocateur Kaye's film of David McKenna's script is a moot point for the moment. Boxoffice prospects range from hot to cool, with maturer audiences in major markets more likely to risk exposure to hateful rhetoric, intense family dramatics, racial violence and a decidedly nonhappy ending.
The strong possibility of awards recognition for the challenging, often superlative performances of Norton and co-star Edward Furlong would help in the hinterlands and subsequent ancillary rollouts.
While a reported shorter version assembled by Kaye may actually have had more impact, there's no doubt that "American History X" will shock many with its antihero leads who hate minorities, think of them as inferior and threatening to society, use racial slurs with intent, and openly embrace the Nazi credo. Heavy stuff, to be sure, but the film often overdoes it to the point of numbing a viewer into submission.
Rather than scaring us into examining our own prejudices and beliefs, this journey to unpleasantville is too often manipulative and strains to maintain tension, demonizing the leads early on for any but the most unreceptive viewers. Like so much discourse and human noise in the world today, the heinous rants in the film against Jews and Rodney King are easy to dismiss. What's a little odd is the way Norton's character is so vague about his eventual dissociation with the skinheads and their intolerant ways, denying one the satisfaction of hearing him recant his former ideology and confess to his crimes of thought and deed.
Anne Dudley's heavy-handed, full-orchestra-and-chorus score is particularly cumbersome to a story set in hazy Venice Beach, Calif., but more troublesome is the often clunky exposition and nonlinear structure that connects a half-dozen or so standout scenes. If nothing else, Kaye succeeds in making Norton's imposing character Derek into an iconographic, not easily forgotten cinematic presence through the use of black-and-white photography in the most grueling scenes.
From a big swastika tattooed on his chest to the unusually nasty way he kills a black car thief, talented hoopster Derek is a slam-dunking menace to society and goes to prison for murder with a smile on his face. But when his loyal younger brother Danny (Furlong) refuses to testify against his idol, Derek serves only three years.
Both brothers were transformed by the death of their firefighter father -- killed in cold blood on the job -- into narrow-minded bigots, with pictures of Hitler tacked on their bedroom wall and such foul friends as hefty pug-ugly Seth (Ethan Suplee). Derek and Danny cohabitate with their couch-ridden mother (Beverly D'Angelo) and teenage sister (Jennifer Lien), who openly confront the brothers about their beliefs with little success but manage to tolerate them.
The school principal (Avery Brooks) appeals to Derek to help Danny -- who writes a school paper on "Mein Kampf" -- escape his older brother's fate, while well-organized neo-Nazi Cameron (Stacy Keach) comes between the brothers when reformed Derek returns from incarceration. Scarily believable, Fairuza Balk is used sparingly as Derek's rabid girlfriend, and Elliott Gould is appropriately subdued as a Jewish family friend who runs into the buzz saw of Derek's anti-Semitism.
Kaye also serves as the film's director of photography, and he sure knows how to craft disturbing images, but there's also a slickness in many of the sequences, such as an improbable skinhead victory on the basketball court that does not contrast well with the gritty verisimilitude of the family scenes.
AMERICAN HISTORY X
New Line Cinema
A Turman-Morrissey Co. production
Director: Tony Kaye
Screenwriter: David McKenna
Producer: John Morrissey
Executive producers: Lawrence Turman,
Steve Tisch, Kearie Peak, Bill Carraro
Director of photography: Tony Kaye
Production designer: Jon Gary Steele
Editors: Jerry Greenberg, Alan Heim
Costume designer: Doug Hall
Music: Anne Dudley
Casting: Valerie McCaffrey
Color/stereo
Cast:
Derek: Edward Norton
Danny: Edward Furlong
Doris: Beverly D'Angelo
Davin: Jennifer Lien
Seth: Ethan Suplee
Stacey: Fairuza Balk
Sweeney: Avery Brooks
Murray: Elliott Gould
Cameron: Stacy Keach
Running time -- 119 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
Whether or not this is the best version of English commercial director and art provocateur Kaye's film of David McKenna's script is a moot point for the moment. Boxoffice prospects range from hot to cool, with maturer audiences in major markets more likely to risk exposure to hateful rhetoric, intense family dramatics, racial violence and a decidedly nonhappy ending.
The strong possibility of awards recognition for the challenging, often superlative performances of Norton and co-star Edward Furlong would help in the hinterlands and subsequent ancillary rollouts.
While a reported shorter version assembled by Kaye may actually have had more impact, there's no doubt that "American History X" will shock many with its antihero leads who hate minorities, think of them as inferior and threatening to society, use racial slurs with intent, and openly embrace the Nazi credo. Heavy stuff, to be sure, but the film often overdoes it to the point of numbing a viewer into submission.
Rather than scaring us into examining our own prejudices and beliefs, this journey to unpleasantville is too often manipulative and strains to maintain tension, demonizing the leads early on for any but the most unreceptive viewers. Like so much discourse and human noise in the world today, the heinous rants in the film against Jews and Rodney King are easy to dismiss. What's a little odd is the way Norton's character is so vague about his eventual dissociation with the skinheads and their intolerant ways, denying one the satisfaction of hearing him recant his former ideology and confess to his crimes of thought and deed.
Anne Dudley's heavy-handed, full-orchestra-and-chorus score is particularly cumbersome to a story set in hazy Venice Beach, Calif., but more troublesome is the often clunky exposition and nonlinear structure that connects a half-dozen or so standout scenes. If nothing else, Kaye succeeds in making Norton's imposing character Derek into an iconographic, not easily forgotten cinematic presence through the use of black-and-white photography in the most grueling scenes.
From a big swastika tattooed on his chest to the unusually nasty way he kills a black car thief, talented hoopster Derek is a slam-dunking menace to society and goes to prison for murder with a smile on his face. But when his loyal younger brother Danny (Furlong) refuses to testify against his idol, Derek serves only three years.
Both brothers were transformed by the death of their firefighter father -- killed in cold blood on the job -- into narrow-minded bigots, with pictures of Hitler tacked on their bedroom wall and such foul friends as hefty pug-ugly Seth (Ethan Suplee). Derek and Danny cohabitate with their couch-ridden mother (Beverly D'Angelo) and teenage sister (Jennifer Lien), who openly confront the brothers about their beliefs with little success but manage to tolerate them.
The school principal (Avery Brooks) appeals to Derek to help Danny -- who writes a school paper on "Mein Kampf" -- escape his older brother's fate, while well-organized neo-Nazi Cameron (Stacy Keach) comes between the brothers when reformed Derek returns from incarceration. Scarily believable, Fairuza Balk is used sparingly as Derek's rabid girlfriend, and Elliott Gould is appropriately subdued as a Jewish family friend who runs into the buzz saw of Derek's anti-Semitism.
Kaye also serves as the film's director of photography, and he sure knows how to craft disturbing images, but there's also a slickness in many of the sequences, such as an improbable skinhead victory on the basketball court that does not contrast well with the gritty verisimilitude of the family scenes.
AMERICAN HISTORY X
New Line Cinema
A Turman-Morrissey Co. production
Director: Tony Kaye
Screenwriter: David McKenna
Producer: John Morrissey
Executive producers: Lawrence Turman,
Steve Tisch, Kearie Peak, Bill Carraro
Director of photography: Tony Kaye
Production designer: Jon Gary Steele
Editors: Jerry Greenberg, Alan Heim
Costume designer: Doug Hall
Music: Anne Dudley
Casting: Valerie McCaffrey
Color/stereo
Cast:
Derek: Edward Norton
Danny: Edward Furlong
Doris: Beverly D'Angelo
Davin: Jennifer Lien
Seth: Ethan Suplee
Stacey: Fairuza Balk
Sweeney: Avery Brooks
Murray: Elliott Gould
Cameron: Stacy Keach
Running time -- 119 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 10/26/1998
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
'For the Boys
''For the Boys'' should primarily play for the girls. This big, fluffy, red-white-and-blue Bette Midler blazer should strut out with a snazzy boxoffice gait for 20th Century Fox. While this All Girl Productionwill likely dazzle enough mature girls to carry it to a ''Beaches''-level boxoffice tide, its somewhat soapy constitution and its often shallow sweep of the last 50 years of U.S. war and social history will swamp many viewers.
The best part of ''Boys'' is, well, the girl herself, Midler as Dixie, a smart-talking, smooth-singing USO entertainer shot straight to fame by her World War II performances.
This Dixie, as you'd guess, is no wallflower: She's a smart, sassy, Mae West-type dynamo who not only sees the big picture but has got the moxie to kick in the pants anyone who can't see beyond their own self-interest; in this case, her senior song-and-dance partner, Eddie Sparks (James Caan), who's never quite tapped into the notion that World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam and all other ''limited engagements'' were not just mere backdrop to the main event, namely his patriotic performances for the troops.
While it's tempting to blast off a 21-popcorn-box salute to the filmmakers for attempting to tell a compelling personal story through the prism of the last 50 years of U.S. history, it's discomforting to view wholesale sequences that reverberate with about as much depth as a Desert Storm victory parade.
For the most part, namely the personal story segments, as Dixie and Eddie hit their high notes and scrape their bottoms, screenwriters Marshall Brickman, Neal Jimenez and Lindy Laub's script rings true, snapping with energetic humor and picking up the colors and uncertainties of the different times.
Unfortunately, this ambitious film is weighted down by its over-bulky, 145-minute frame; director Mark Rydell, while wonderfully pinpointing many grand-scale particulars in his scope, also allows the film to wallow in redundant, superficial sap.
Despite ''Boys' '' bloated nature, it's full of oomph, namely Midler, who struts her considerable stuff to the staccato-steppin' max. While she's at her funnest when dropping bawdy bombs on all the stuffed shirts, Midler's acting range is clearly as wide as her vocal range. The dark torment of Dixie's waning years, when she feels she's lived beyond her time, are deeply touching -- a testament to Midler's capacity to reach down and get to her character's low notes.
Caan, while somewhat uncharismatic as the young Eddie Sparks, similarly pulls off a solid performance: Caan reveals the wondrous, as well as the hideous, components to this superficial showman's successes. Lending solid support is George Segal as the duo's brainy, underappreciated writer.
In this big-bunting production, technical contributions are generally superior, with bars and stripes to costume designer Wayne Finkelman for the cross-all-wars threads and to composer Dave Grusin for the big-band blasts.
FOR THE BOYS
20th Century Fox
An All Girl Production
A Mark Rydell Film
Producers Bette Midler, Bonnie Bruckheimer, Margaret South
Director Mark Rydell
Screenwriters Marshall Brickman, Neal Jimenez, Lindy Laub
Story Neal Jimenez, Lindy Laub
Executive producer Mark Rydell
Co-producer Ray Hartwick
Director of photography Stephen Goldblatt
Production designer Assheton Gorton
Editors Jerry Greenberg, Jere Huggins
Costume designer Wayne Finkelman
Music Dave Grusin
Executive music producer Joel Sill
Musical sequences devised by Joe Layton
Casting Lynn Stalmaster
Sound mixer Jim Webb
Color/Stereo
Cast:
Dixie Leonard Bette Midler
Eddie Sparks James Caan
Art Silver George Segal
Shephard Patrick O'Neal
Danny Christopher Rydell
Jeff Brooks Arye Gross
Sam Schiff Norman Fell
Luanna Trott Rosemary Murphy
Running time -- 145 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
(c) The Hollywood Reporter...
The best part of ''Boys'' is, well, the girl herself, Midler as Dixie, a smart-talking, smooth-singing USO entertainer shot straight to fame by her World War II performances.
This Dixie, as you'd guess, is no wallflower: She's a smart, sassy, Mae West-type dynamo who not only sees the big picture but has got the moxie to kick in the pants anyone who can't see beyond their own self-interest; in this case, her senior song-and-dance partner, Eddie Sparks (James Caan), who's never quite tapped into the notion that World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam and all other ''limited engagements'' were not just mere backdrop to the main event, namely his patriotic performances for the troops.
While it's tempting to blast off a 21-popcorn-box salute to the filmmakers for attempting to tell a compelling personal story through the prism of the last 50 years of U.S. history, it's discomforting to view wholesale sequences that reverberate with about as much depth as a Desert Storm victory parade.
For the most part, namely the personal story segments, as Dixie and Eddie hit their high notes and scrape their bottoms, screenwriters Marshall Brickman, Neal Jimenez and Lindy Laub's script rings true, snapping with energetic humor and picking up the colors and uncertainties of the different times.
Unfortunately, this ambitious film is weighted down by its over-bulky, 145-minute frame; director Mark Rydell, while wonderfully pinpointing many grand-scale particulars in his scope, also allows the film to wallow in redundant, superficial sap.
Despite ''Boys' '' bloated nature, it's full of oomph, namely Midler, who struts her considerable stuff to the staccato-steppin' max. While she's at her funnest when dropping bawdy bombs on all the stuffed shirts, Midler's acting range is clearly as wide as her vocal range. The dark torment of Dixie's waning years, when she feels she's lived beyond her time, are deeply touching -- a testament to Midler's capacity to reach down and get to her character's low notes.
Caan, while somewhat uncharismatic as the young Eddie Sparks, similarly pulls off a solid performance: Caan reveals the wondrous, as well as the hideous, components to this superficial showman's successes. Lending solid support is George Segal as the duo's brainy, underappreciated writer.
In this big-bunting production, technical contributions are generally superior, with bars and stripes to costume designer Wayne Finkelman for the cross-all-wars threads and to composer Dave Grusin for the big-band blasts.
FOR THE BOYS
20th Century Fox
An All Girl Production
A Mark Rydell Film
Producers Bette Midler, Bonnie Bruckheimer, Margaret South
Director Mark Rydell
Screenwriters Marshall Brickman, Neal Jimenez, Lindy Laub
Story Neal Jimenez, Lindy Laub
Executive producer Mark Rydell
Co-producer Ray Hartwick
Director of photography Stephen Goldblatt
Production designer Assheton Gorton
Editors Jerry Greenberg, Jere Huggins
Costume designer Wayne Finkelman
Music Dave Grusin
Executive music producer Joel Sill
Musical sequences devised by Joe Layton
Casting Lynn Stalmaster
Sound mixer Jim Webb
Color/Stereo
Cast:
Dixie Leonard Bette Midler
Eddie Sparks James Caan
Art Silver George Segal
Shephard Patrick O'Neal
Danny Christopher Rydell
Jeff Brooks Arye Gross
Sam Schiff Norman Fell
Luanna Trott Rosemary Murphy
Running time -- 145 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
(c) The Hollywood Reporter...
- 11/15/1991
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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