BASEketball (1998)

TWO GUYS INVENTED A GAME... AND TURNED THE SPORTS WORLD UPSIDE DOWN!

Back before David Zucker became one of the men behind Airplane!, The Kentucky Fried Movie and the Police Squad series, and thus changing the face of comedy forever, he was a regular youngster playing ball with his friends in his driveway. However, the game they played wasn’t the one you would expect. They played a game of their own creation, a weird hybrid of baseball and basketball. As it is, their formative driveway hi-jinx stayed only within that small circle, and Zucker would go on to become a famous filmmaker with his brother and friend. In 1998, though, when he hadn’t stepped behind the camera for a few years, Zucker decided that it was time to share the game of his youth with world.

Two jobless losers from Milwaukee, Joe Cooper (Trey Parker) and Doug Remer (Matt Stone), invent a new game playing basketball, but using baseball rules: BASEketball. After the game gains popularity, and with help from billionaire Ted Denslow (Ernest Borgnine), they form the Professional BASEketball League where everyone gets the same pay and no team can change cities. However, when Denslow dies and bequeaths the team to Cooper, a rival team owner, Baxter Cain (Robert Vaughan), tries to force changes on the game to make more money.

Considering that the film was about the creation and development of a hybrid sport, it seems somewhat fitting that the comedic influence of the project would be something of a hybrid itself. Although it was a project pursued without the aid of David Zucker’s regular partners, brother Jerry and friend Jim Abrahams, his individual comedy stylings are still very well established: a simple storyline crammed with jokes to the point of bursting. To try and compliment this, a new sensibility was added, namely Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of South Park. South Park had landed on TV screens the year before and made an instant impression on the world for its crudeness (both in jokes and production values) and its controversy (the show was one of several things blamed for youthful delinquency). Convinced that the show would last only one season before being cancelled, Parker and Stone looked elsewhere for their next project and fell upon Zucker’s new film, which would be his first as director for seven years. Needless to say, the potential for these different comedic methods mixing together did create something of a ripple of anticipation. As it is, South Park wasn’t cancelled, which meant that Parker and Stone, now committed to two different projects, had to film BASEketball by day and make South Park by night.

When I said that Zucker tends to operate with a basic story for his films, I’m not kidding. The script for BASEketball is a thing riddled with cliché and standard set-pieces, which clearly is written in such a manner that the force of personality is what makes the film, and jokes, shine. There are familiar Zucker-isms in there, including his standard cruelty to kids bit that lifts straight from Airplane! (someone accidentally causes a sick child distress) and gags in the background, as well cameo appearances from his old buddies Robert Stack and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. However, there are two things that I find odd about the script. The first is that there are, including Zucker, four credited writers on this film. Seriously, four? Normally when more than two people contribute to a script, it starts to suffer from the old Too Many Cooks Syndrome, making it feel disjointed and unwieldy. But the script for BASEketball doesn’t feel this way at all, if anything suffering from feeling too basic, with little development beyond the simple blueprint of the very familiar story arc. That sure is a lot of no effort from four writers.

The second problem that I have with things is that Trey Parker and Matt Stone clearly had such an integral influence on how this film was made, so it’s seems unfair that they not be given credit at all. For example, the role of Squeak Scolari was concocted by the pair, who insisted that Zucker create a third character for the central unit, and this has a huge effect on how things progress. Plus, so much of their dialogue is so clearly their words and not those that others wrote for them, with the infamous ‘psyche-outs’ being the biggest example of this. When they’re not onscreen, you can bet that it was Zucker and co. behind it; when Parker and Stone are onscreen, there is virtually nothing that isn’t theirs. There are even numerous jokes that refer directly to the pair. For example, when they signed up for the film, many of their South Park fans instantly began calling them sell-outs, so when Joe calls Doug a sell-out, they both get a look on their faces as if they’ve heard this somewhere before. Also, Parker twice breaks out character voices from South Park, of Mr. Garrison and Cartman respectively. There is even a scene featuring a song written and performed by Parker to his own character, which is itself so very much a thing that he would do.

And this rather brings me to a major point of the film. Whilst I do think it’s funny, and laughed several times throughout, there is a clear gap between how funny the Zucker portion is and how funny the Parker/Stone portion is. They’re both funny, but the latter jokes, for all their crudity, are much more effective. Most of the film will give you small laughs and chuckles, but the big laughs come from the aforementioned psyche-outs, which are given all of their punch by Parker and Stone. It therefore creates a weird imbalance in the film, where you spend a lot of the run-of-the-mill, if competently handled plot waiting to get back to the bits you know will be funnier. Now, Zucker has done a good job in keeping the pace up, so the film isn’t a slog, but there’s still the mild sense of impatience that comes through it all. Certainly, there are some jokes that simply don’t work, like Ernest Borgnine singing I’m Too Sexy in his own video will, but there is certainly more funny than not.

The performances are of varied quality. Parker and Stone both put on a very spirited and funny show (although Joe and Doug are likely not a million miles away from the reality of the pair’s friendship); Dian Bachar really commits to the role of Squeak Scolari, being self-effacing, emotional and damn funny (his delivery of the line “I am not a piece of shit” absolutely slays me - seriously, I had to stop and laugh just there); and even Yasmine Bleeth actually regularly hits a decent comedic stride for much of the film. Robert Vaughan is also always a decent bad guy, but Jenny McCarthy comes off the worst, though it’s mostly because her role requires her only to look good and not do too much else.

BASEketball is a pretty silly movie, and the story is as familiar as it can get, but it’s harmless and has still got some very funny stuff to it. It’s the psyche-outs that are the best jokes, so you may end up feeling a bit uninterested when they’re not on, but there is still enough to keep you entertained throughout. Honestly, it’s a perfectly decent Friday-night-with-friends movie, so don’t judge it too harshly.

Armageddon (1998)

FOR LOVE. FOR HONOUR. FOR MANKIND.

Michael Bay. For many, this man is the Devil. A Devil made of overblown visual excess, superfast editing, heavy stylisation and heavy-handed patriotic images that seems to want to pound the merry hell out of the viewer’s brain, forcing it into submission. He’s also one of the most bankable directors on the face of the planet. He may spend an absurd amount of money on his films, but he makes it all back and more. In 1998, he released one of his most successful films ever, a disaster movie about an asteroid heading for Earth and total destruction. The fact that another similarly-themed film came out only a couple of months prior did little to diminish its business. Michael Bay had more zoom, more bang, more Bruce Willis saving the world. And thus, like the Devil would, Michael Bay brought us Armageddon.

A meteorite the size of Texas is heading towards Earth, and will destroy all life on the planet. With only eighteen days until impact, NASA come up with a plan to fly out the rock, drill to the core and blow it apart with a nuclear bomb. To do this, they enlist the help of Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis), the world’s best deep core driller, to train their astronauts for the job. However, Harry thinks the astronauts can’t be trained in time, and decides to take his own crew and do the job himself.

I’ll be honest, it’s a bit unfair to be laying all this blame at Michael Bay’s feet. Equally as guilty of pushing the much-lamented line of overblown Hollywood excess is über-producer Jerry Bruckheimer. They’ve had a steady partnership since Bay’s feature debut with 1995’s Bad Boys and, between the two of them, they have racked up an impressive list of big budget smash hits ever since. In fact, Bad Boys is the film that did the least amount of business, only managing to make around $141 million from a $19 million budget… that’s, uh… that’s some failure there. Since then the budgets skyrocketed, with Armageddon’s (coincidentally) being around $140 million, with a final box office of just over $553 million. Good lord, that is a lot of money. It’s with such numbers that Michael Bay has always felt that he can effectively counter any criticisms about the quality of his films. After all, if the film’s were really so bad, how can they be making so much money? And even if he did accept what critics say of his work, he’d be drying his artistic tears with $100 bills. Such is his life. Now, enough of all this financial talk. What’s Armageddon really like?

We’ll leave the visuals aside for now and look at the script itself first… Armageddon is stupid, insultingly so. Whilst the premise of an asteroid hurtling towards Earth with global annihilation on its mind is hardly far-fetched, the stuff that comes after it is wilfully ridiculous. In fact, this stupidity is so deep-rooted in the film, it actively tries to make people stupid by fostering a rather unsubtle form of anti-intellectualism. Watching it, there’s a common element that is returned to over and over again throughout: smart people are dumb, and the common man always knows better. The idea that sending a crew of deep core drillers into space to tunnel into a meteorite is insane. They do initially suggest that qualified astronauts, who have already been training for eight months for a (coincidentally) similar space drilling mission, receive some extra guidance from Stamper on the best way to proceed. However, since Stamper says that it takes a lifetime to know how to become a real roughneck, he makes the call that it would be easier to train drillers how to astronaut than training astronauts how to drill. That’s ridiculous. On this point, there is a story that, supposedly, when Ben Affleck was discussing the script with Michael Bay, he questioned the logic in this point. Michael Bay’s response? “Shut up.” Of course, this offers up further questions, like what kind of response is that to a perfectly legitimate point? Why wasn’t this point discussed further? Why did Affleck agree to do the film if that’s the answers he gets to basic questions of story logic?

Bay has actually openly talked about how the film’s solution doesn’t really make sense, and that many aspects of the film’s relationship with reality are nonsense. For example, why are there so many massive explosions and fires in space? Where’s all this convenient gravity coming from? Why are the communications signals using a separate, weaker satellite to transmit than the weapons remote? Why do both driller vehicles have machine guns? Apparently, the filmmakers were aware of all of these problems and inaccuracies and holes in the film, but chose to leave them be because it would make it more entertaining, and that your average film goer doesn’t know enough about these things to be able to really question them… and this is how we come to something close to an answer as to why Michael Bay seems to hate intelligence. The less you know, the more receptive to this kind of agonising drivel you are. And Bay compounds this by repeatedly suggesting that the smart people are idiots, easily outclassed with straight-talking and "common sense". In Armageddon, Jason Issacs plays a NASA scientist and is introduced as “pretty much the smartest man in the world.” However, even he is left looking sheepish after only a few minutes with Harry Stamper, who puts down his technical capabilities and seems shocked that this big-time smart NASA science guy can’t come up with anything better than a one-shot drilling expedition to save humanity. That’s why Stamper gets on so well with Billy Bob Thornton’s Dan Truman. He may be a smart engineer guy, but they’re cut from the same straight-talking, “just the facts, ma’am” kind of cloth. The rest of the NASA boys all seem to be sweating a lot and on the point of nervous breakdown, which sits in remarkable contrast to how we saw things not too long ago in Apollo 13. Those guys knew the stakes, but they also knew that staying calm and rational was the best way to approach a crisis.

There are a few concessions made towards allowing smart people to have some kind of dignity. Amongst the crew that Stamper selects to take with him are Oscar Choice, a brilliant geologist played by Owen Wilson, and Rockhound, another geologist and certified genius played by Steve Buscemi. However, their dignity does not last long. Oscar never really gets to show how smart he is, since he doesn’t last long on the flight. Rockhound, so named because he’s constantly horny (and the closest we’ll get to a live-action Quagmire from Family Guy), ends up going nuts with space dementia and has to be physically taped up after he starts shooting the superfluous machine gun. The fact that these guys are said to be very smart is really just so we don’t question why they’re being allowed to go along on this mission, but it’s just so transparent. It all actually reminds me of old cartoons from the 1980s like Inhumanoids and The Centurions. Those shows were full of hero characters said to be accomplished chess players and military strategists and thrill-seeking master chemists, and all for a show that was just about people fighting monsters in spacesuits. The ridiculous character bios were just something to make it “more plausible”. The difference is that those cartoons actually put forward the idea that being smart was a good thing, whereas Armageddon will only let you be smart if you don’t ask questions about the plot and have some sort of other serious character flaw, like being a sex-pest or a corpse.

Okay… now the visuals. The special effects are superb. Honestly, they are really very good. They should be, it’s a Michael Bay film and that’s what he does best. We’ll have to just accept that with great effects come great stretches on the limitations of movie physics, such as the fact that the world seems to be in a near perpetual state of sunset. I understand that Bay likes sunsets, because they look cool. And they do. However, if you’re going to show a short montage of moments from around the world, how in the hell can every country be at sunset at the same time? Also, Bay has this thing of constantly moving the camera, sliding from side-to-side or, his favourite, moving the camera around the character as they turn in the opposite direction whilst in slow-motion. It’s cool to look at, but it does speak to a weird sort of visual hyperactivity that many find unsettling.

Yet another disagreeable thing that bubbles up out of this film: in the first ten minutes, it’s really quite racist. Just look at the scene in which the first wave of smaller meteorites hammers New York City. Eddie Griffin appears as a bike messenger with a small dog called Reggie and, I swear to God, you could replace every single one of his lines with “Aw shiiit, son!” When Griffin has a run-in with a Samoan street vendor, Eddie unloads a light bit of racial abuse (“If I wasn’t a Christian, I’d be throwing your fat, pineapple-eatin’ ass through the window!”). Then there’s Mark Curry, who plays a cab driver and, once again, he might as well be saying “Aw shiiit, son!” over and over. His passengers, an Asian couple, aren’t much better. The husband never says a word, but his wife speaks in deliberate stunted English “I! Want! To Go! Shopping!” Christ, what the hell is this? Armageddon was the highest grossing film of 1998, and it has this kind of crap in it? If you can reduce most of your characters’ dialogue to a single stereotypical catchphrase without losing any hint of personality or affecting proceedings in the slightest, you know you done wrong. Even Peter Stormare doesn’t seem to be playing a Russian cosmonaut so much as a thick Russian accent that happens to be wrapped in a cosmonaut. However, he’s okay because he’s just a regular guy, who fixes multi-million dollar pieces of equipment by cracking it with a wrench and yelling at it.

The performances themselves are okay, though nothing really goes beyond that. There is one performance that really drags things down, and that is Affleck. Now, I’ll admit to being something a fan of the guy. Kind of. I like him in a few things and I certainly think he gets more flak than he really deserves. However, almost every scene with him here is either way overblown or it seems like they just interrupted him having soup in order to film. So he’s either cocky in a uncommitted kind of way, or he commits too much, shooting way over the pitch of everyone else. Maybe at some point, he asked Michael Bay for direction and got told to shut up again.

Was there anything I even liked about it?… the music was pretty good, all stirring and effectively drawn. As I said, the effects were good, and so was the sound… hmmm…

Armageddon is unbelievably stupid. It makes little to no sense, most of the acting is of a standard no higher than alright, and it shows a level of ignorance on so many things that it’s actually rather impressive in its scale. What’s worse is that the film actually relies on its audience being more stupid than itself, actively encouraging them to distance themselves from logic, intelligence and basic common sense. It’s a hateful film, and no amount of Bruce Willis as The Great American Jesus stuff will put this right anytime soon.

Apt Pupil (1998)

IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE IN THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL, YOU'VE GOT A LOT TO LEARN

What is it that makes a person evil? Is it something that must be taught, or is it something deeply inherent in some people? If it were something that is handed down through lessons of a sort, what kind of person would actually seek to learn those ways? It’s the classic case of Nature versus Nurture. For director Bryan Singer’s follow-up to the very successful crime thriller The Usual Suspects, he chose to consider this subject by filming an adaptation of a novella from Stephen King’s Different Seasons book. Two of the stories contained therein had already been filmed, 1986’s Stand by Me and 1994’s The Shawshank Redemption. The next one in line concerned the story of, essentially, a boy who traps a monster – Apt Pupil.

High-schooler Todd Bowden (Brad Renfro) discovers that an old man living in his neighbourhood, Arthur Denker (Ian McKellen), is actually wanted Nazi war criminal, Kurt Dussander. Todd blackmails Dussander into telling him stories of Dussander’s work in the death camps during WWII or else he’ll tell the authorities. Dussander grudgingly accepts, regaling the boy with horrifying stories of murder and death. However, the more Todd hears, the more it starts to affect him, and the more it awakens the dormant psychopath resting beneath Dussander’s surface.

In 1942, before he wrote the Narnia books for which he is best known, C.S. Lewis published another book, The Screwtape Letters. The book itself is a series of correspondence from a senior demon, Screwtape, to his junior demon nephew, Wormwood. Wormwood regularly asks his experienced uncle for advice and help in tempting his human charge away from God and towards an eternity in Hell. It’s a damn good book, which you should go read if you haven’t already. It also seems to serve as something of an inspiration for the source story of Apt Pupil. Upon learning of the Nazi’s murderous efforts in the Second World War, and that one of the people in his neighbourhood is one of the more notorious members of the Third Reich, Todd sets out, not to expose him, but to learn from him. He’s not looking for tips on genocide, he just wants to know more about what the Nazis really did in the camps. As he puts it, “everything they’re afraid to teach us in school.” Dussander has no intention of doing so to begin with, simply wishing to be left alone in his aging dormancy, but Todd blackmails him, telling about photos and fingerprints and dossiers on record in databases. Honestly, this is probably the weakest part of proceedings, offering little in the way of explaining how a 15-year-old boy is able to acquire a file on a wanted Nazi officer, complete with photos, fingerprints and notes, in 1984 Southern California. It’s a hole, but the film wisely skips over it quickly. With such apparent evidence in Todd’s possession, Dussander has little recourse but to comply with the boy’s request. As the months go by, the pair meet almost every day, Todd going to Dussander’s home under the guise of assisting an old man with poor eyesight... his parents are so proud. He learns about the gassing, the “special soap” the Nazis made, and other such atrocities in the old man’s past. Todd’s most regular question: “what did it feel like?”

There’s the sense throughout that Todd is more than just an overly curious student with a fascination many would call “morbid”. The feeling one gets is that he is feeling the first stirrings of something much darker than mere curiosity, that awakening inside him is the personality of a psychopath. He wants to know how Dussander felt as he killed hundreds, thousands, even millions of people because he wants to know if it matches his own feelings of latent murderous brutality. There are signs throughout that this is the direction he’s going. As the film progresses, he takes recognisable steps on the path of the psycho: he already has a clear and unhealthy obsession with murder; he displays many signs of the manipulation of others; he begins to take his aggression out on small animals (an already injured pigeon); he seems to be impotent, unable to maintain an erection, despite the efforts of the girl he’s with. Todd is gradually unfolding as a predator, and has sought the council of a more experienced monster, whether he really understood why at the time or not.

More interesting is the trajectory of Todd’s new teacher, Kurt Dussander. Formerly one of the most notoriously vicious Nazi officers in Germany (in the book, he is referred to as the “Blood Fiend of Patin”), he long ago escaped from prosecution for war crimes and landed in a suburb in Southern California. Here, he has become a feeble old man, someone with every intention of spending his last days under everyone’s radar. When Todd overturns the rock under which he has been hiding, over the course of the film, Dussander slowly uncoils, finding his own homicidal tendencies to be waking up, too. As he recounts the tales of his exploits to the young boy, Todd eagerly listening and asking questions, there are small hints that Dussander is beginning to enjoy this walk down memory lane. When Todd asks what it felt like to kill people, Dussander lets the briefest of smirks slip across his face before composing himself and dispassionately answering with the party line, “It had to be done.” A scene where Todd buys Dussander a fancy dress costume, an SS Nazi uniform, gives more vent to Dussander’s old self. Todd demands he march for him, which he does, but memory kicks in and the old man begins to rigidly stomp and salute on his own. Without realising it, Todd has unlocked the cage in which Dussander has kept his own monster locked up for years. After this, Dussander becomes more like his old killer self. The old excuse that the Nazis that were caught and tried for their crimes was that they were “only following orders.” It’s clear that, at least with Dussander, he was a monster with or without the orders… he killed so well because he liked it so much.

That the two never entirely trust each other (indeed, why should they?) is a constant battle between them. Todd gets his way through blackmail, but Dussander is still smart enough to know that he needs to protect himself from this boy. They each try to find something else to hold over the other, looking for the upper hand, two fierce creatures circling each other before a fight. Within this, though, they remain somewhat protective of each other. They hate each other intensely, but they need each other, too. Not only do they each claim to have evidence on the other in a “very safe place,” but they can be more comfortably themselves with each other than anyone else. As such, Dussander becomes a positive influence on Todd’s studies, and Todd a great help for when Dussander really needs it. The simple fact is that they are pretty much one and the same. They both project an image of being good and harmless and of no threat to anyone, but they are both very much wolves in sheeps’ clothing. The only difference between them is that Dussander already knows it, and Todd soon will.

There are numerous differences between the film and its source material. The original story is much more violent, with Todd’s killer instinct becoming much more severe. His nightmares, only really touched on in the film, are much darker, and it all adds more credence to his stance as a burgeoning serial killer. The biggest difference is the ending, which many have decried as being too weak in the film when compared to the book’s climax. The book goes for a more hysterical frenzy, with Todd snapping and going on a spree. It’s certainly a far more dramatic ending, but the film aims for something much darker and bleaker. The relative success of that will largely depend on the given viewer, but I rather like it for its sinister implication, and also because it sits much better with the thematic core of the piece. Book Todd didn’t learn his lesson; Film Todd did. If there is one thing I wish was maintained better in the transition from one medium to the other, it’s the radical shift in Todd’s personality before and after his “lessons”. In the beginning, he’s the good, clean-cut, all-American boy, with good grades, a winning smile and wholesome habits. The more he hears from Dussander, the less wholesome he becomes. The fact that he never cursed before meeting Dussander is a big change for him. We simply don’t have time to establish this as a baseline for Todd in the film, so we rely on his scholastic performance as indications of his personality change. It’s not a fatal flaw; it’s just something that stuck with me.

Singer’s direction is perfectly decent, but it’s the acting that is the real strength of the film. Both roles are filled very well. Brad Renfro was the young and good-looking type (I say “was” because he actually died in 2008), but he was capable of projecting a coldness about him, a mean streak that undercut the wholesome veneer nicely. Indeed, that’s what rests at the heart of Todd. You need to believe that he could be the top of his class and a hit with the ladies, but equally so that he could lie, blackmail, and even kill with the same ease. Renfro does this well. Even better is Ian McKellen, who is excellent as the shuffling old man who turns out to be cruel psychopath. The way McKellen holds himself, slightly stooped and slow, belies the keenness of his eyes and the vicious delight in his smile. It’s a dark, unsettling and superbly unnerving performance from the man. Another performance of note is from Elias Koteas, as a homeless man who makes the mistake of buying into Dussander’s act of the harmless old man, much to his regret.

Apt Pupil is a fine and dark film, nicely touching on the nature of evil and where it comes from. Some will likely be disappointed with the deviations from the book, which is a far more violent affair. However, the film achieves a bleaker, if quieter, sensibility than the book. Singer’s direction is strong, and the performances from Renfro and McKellen are both excellent. It’s a sinister and interesting film, and well worth a viewing.

American History X (1998)

VIOLENCE AS A WAY OF LIFE

Racism… feel the eerie chill that runs through the room when the subject is brought up. It’s an old issue, but still holds all of the power to antagonise and divide today. Some people believe it’s a simple issue of perception; others believe it to be one of, if not The most complex and thorny subject in society. It’s a heavy topic and, in the tradition of the artist’s need to explore the many problems of society, it has been the focus of so many works, from novels to films to music to painting to sculpture… like I say, it’s a big one. In 1998, another film was released to explore this subject: American History X.

A brutal skinhead named Derek Vinyard (Edward Norton) is tried and sent to prison for the murder of two black men who tried to steal his truck. When he gets paroled three years later, Derek emerges reformed, but finds that his younger brother Danny (Edward Furlong), who grew up idolising his brother, is following him down the same path. Derek resolves to save his brother from the same fate.

American History X had something of a tortured birth. It was the first script from writer David McKenna and the first film for director Tony Kaye. The story has a good central conceit and Kaye certainly seemed to have an idea of, at least, how he wanted to the film to look. The problem came much later on, during the editing process. Kaye, who was editing the film himself, was taking a while to finish. New Line Cinema, who were behind the film, didn’t like his version and made several suggestions as to what they wanted from the final cut. Kaye begrudgingly then came up with a second, much shorter version of the film. New Line apparently rejected it right away and took the task of editing away from Kaye, bringing in editors Jerry Greenberg and Alan Heim (who got final credit) and Edward Norton to come up with a new version for release. Angry at this decision, Tony Kaye disowned the film and tried to have his name taken off of the project. However, because he openly spoke about his reasons for doing so in Variety, he violated the rules of the Director’s Guild of America and was not allowed to remove his name. Kaye then sued both the DGA and New Line for violation of his right to free speech. Pretty messed up, isn’t it?

I suspect the reason that Kaye was taking so long to come up with his best edit of the film was because he saw a problem with it that he was trying his best to cover, which pretty much seems to exist at the scripting stage. In the chronology presented by the film, Derek starts off as a teenager in high school, intelligent but naïve. We see that the beginnings of his hatred, or at least mistrust, of people of other races rests with what his dad taught him at the dinner table. Derek’s father was clearly a big part of his life, as he alludes to how important he was to him. However, we really only have this one scene to show what the father is like and how that inevitably leads to Derek becoming the skinhead we meet at the film’s opening. It does make a kind of sense, but it still seems like quite a leap, especially since this is the only time we see the father. We already know that he was killed when he was shot trying to put out a fire in black neighbourhood, which Derek immediately takes as being clear evidence that black people have no respect for law, property or life. A couple more scenes would perhaps have helped sell this trajectory more, but as it is, it’s a lot to hang on a single scene.

Also, there is a constant shift in narrative perspective, though this is made easier to handle due to Kaye’s decision to film past events in black and white and present events in colour. Most of the film is told in flashback, narrated by Danny as he tries to write a paper on his brother. He recounts the big moments that he was present for in Derek’s growth into the skinhead leader, which serve for some powerful scenes. However, because all we can see of the past is what Danny saw, we don’t get answers for some questions that would have been very interesting. For example, how did Derek fall in with Cameron Alexander (Stacy Keach), the man who fed him the white supremacist stuff, to begin with? This is a hugely significant moment of Derek’s life and incredibly important to our understanding of his development, but since Danny was not privy to this, neither are we. It just happens. Even then, there are some slight holes in this point of narration, such as his mother talking to Murray outside their home. Then we have the moments of the present, which are free of narrative constriction, so we can go where we want, follow whomever we want. Under these conditions, we split our time mainly between Derek and Danny, with the occasional deviation into glimpses of other characters. Then there is a second, more extended flashback sequence from Derek, telling Danny about his time in prison. So, within the film, there are three shifts in perspective. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does leave the whole feeling a bit disjointed.

Ultimately, the problem with the script is that it tries to do too much. It wants to open a debate on racial politics, it wants to meditate on the nature of hatred, it wants to show the brutal actions and the more brutal consequences of these characters, it wants to scare, it wants to educate, it wants to offer a small glimmer of hope… the script simply can’t do all of these things in a concise and erudite manner. As I said, I think that’s what Tony Kaye was trying to compensate for in the editing suite. He saw that some scenes were not really carrying the full impact that they should have, and tried to work around it. Not that the edit we see is without problems. Often, characters are ignored when you really feel they would have had something to say. For example, there’s the scene where the Vinyard family are at the dinner table and Derek’s father is telling him not to swallow all of the “affirmative black-tion bullshit”. This scene seems to exist only for Derek and his father… but the rest of the family are present. Don’t they have any thoughts on this? We know Davina, Derek’s sister, would disagree, but she stays silent. There isn’t even a shot of her during all this. Why? Again, this seems like the kind of thing that results from a script that hasn’t been properly conceived and a direction that hasn’t been properly focused. Saying that, there is report that part of Norton’s input in the editing process was to give himself more screen time, which could also explain such a problem.

So, yes, I do think that there some problems with the film on a basic level of conception, but this is all stuff that speaks to, for lack of a better way of putting it, my filmic intellect. If I ignore the problems of narrative or plot, what does the film do on an emotional level? It’s a very emotive subject, so it would be foolish to ignore the impact that emotion has. I find the film very disquieting and unsettling, but I say that in a good way. The film may seem more like a string of scenes on some occasions, but these scenes do have power to them. This is pretty much thanks to some excellent performances onscreen. Edward Furlong often gets relegated to simply watching events happen, being that he is the conduit for the viewer, but he does carry himself well in the role. He shows that Danny isn’t really a believer in all of this neo-Nazi crap, but goes along with it because it gives him a sense of being and a social life, not to mention because it makes him feel closer to his brother, whom he clearly admires. Ethan Suplee’s Seth is a repulsive individual, offensive in almost every aspect, even to his own friends, who put up with him only because he’s so intimidating. Avery Brooks is a firm and dignified presence in the film as Sweeney, one of the few people willing to meet Derek and engage with his ideals. Guy Torry gets overlooked a lot, but his is a rather important role. His Lamont is Derek’s first real interaction with a black person as equals, which only happens because Lamont wins him over with humour. If he wasn’t convincing, there would be a real weak spot to Derek’s story. Beverly D’Angelo also gets a rather overlooked show in the film, but is rather touching as Derek’s much put-upon mother. However, this film belongs to Edward Norton. He’s a force in this film, both emotional and physical. He comfortably carries the early Derek’s slightly unsure teenage self; through to his rather scary incarnation as an instigator of hate (the look of pride on his face after he murders two people is very unsettling); and finally to his reformed and repentant self, trying to severe his connections to his past life for the good of his family.

American History X is a good, but flawed film, which holds some great performances, especially from Norton. However, there is something that stands in the way of it being the really great film that you know it wants to be. There are small technical issues with some of the camerawork, but the structure of the film remains the biggest the obstacle to overcome, which sees the final message maybe a little hard to nail down. Nevertheless, I do like the film. It’s provocative and deeply unsettling and doesn’t really offer a clean conclusion. I’m not sure it makes its point as powerfully as it wants to, but it does at least try.