In a day of seeing movies and the Singer
exhibition at the National Gallery, my boyfriend and I went over
to Georgetown yesterday to the cheap theater to see
"American History X," not one of my choices to see, but
Edward Norton was nominated for best actor -- and we try to see
everything we can that is nominated.
There is a line from "Rebel Without A
Cause" to this movie, and it's sort of a mixture of
cautionary tale and hand-wringing about teenagers. In this case,
it's white kids who hate black kids who hate them back.
Set in Venice Beach (which after seeing a
couple of throw-away movies and MTV's Real World a few years ago
I thought was a kind of live and let live place), AHX is
incredibly violent. Norton is believable as the Nazi who has
second thoughts. It's a sad story without much hope.
re; E Norton. Is there any other current actor
whose range of personality seems limited and yet who creates
wholly different, remarkable characters? His Catholic altar boy
in the movie with R. Gere (chilling performance), his sweet
dancing and singing in Woody Allen's musical, and his thoughtful
lawyer in Larry Flynt. Now this.
Norton buffed up for this movie, and his
character has a large Nazi swastika tatooed on one of his nicely
defined pecs. The large swastika is used for effect too much, it
is almost another character in the movie. Edward Furlong was good
as the teenage brother. Stacey Keach played the Jon Voight role
as the older, evil manipulative head Nazi.
