Product Description

Derek Vinyard is dangerous, a coiled fury of hate who leads a neo-Nazi gang. But time and events start to change him. He reassesses his ways while doing time for manslaughter and emerges from prison eager to keep his younger brother (Edward Furlong) from falling victim to the thug cycle of violence and payback. It may be too late. Weaving in and out of events past and present in Dereks life, American History X is revealing in its look at white-supremacist gangs and impassioned in its message that hatred and bigotry can be unlearned. Edward Norton (Fight Club, Pride and Glory) portrays Derek, giving a powerful, persuasive, Oscarr-nominated* performance.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3959 in DVD
• Brand: NEW Line Home Video
• Released on: 2009-04-07
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish, English
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 119 minutes

Features

• Derek Vinyard is dangerous, a coiled fury of hate who leads a neo-Nazi gang. But time and events start to change him. He reassesses his ways while doing time for manslaughter and emerges from prison eager to keep his younger brother (Edward Furlong) from falling victim to the thug cycle of violence and payback. It may be too late.Weaving in and out of events past and present in Dereks life, Americ

Amazon.com
Edward Norton was nominated for a 1998 Best Actor Oscar for his role as Derek Vinyard, a thoughtful kid turned neo-Nazi after his father is slain. Edward Furlong plays his younger brother, Danny, determined to follow in his brother's footsteps. The easy routes the film seems prepared to take never materialize. It continually makes Derek's transformation both in and out of his racist beliefs believable and persuasive. Stacy Keach is given the head vampire role of the local skinhead chapter, Cameron, and he's the closest this film comes to an overt overstatement. Norton, however, is fantastic, embodying a person who roller-coasters through hatred like he can't wait to ride again. His diatribes are not unlike what can be heard on any given conservative radio station on any given day, but he doesn't spew them as cant or screed. Only when his violent emotions take charge, negating any sense or stand, is the underlying fallacy and nature of his beliefs made plain. This film was undermined by the film's own director, Tony Kaye, who made such a braying ass of himself and his work that it distorted the public's view of what is an interesting social and psychological lesson in the war between ideas and ideologues, reason and racism. --Keith Simanton

From The New Yorker
Young Edward Norton, who seemed to have no body at all in the recent "Rounders"-he faded away from the camera, like a ghost-is here muscled up and swaggering, with a swastika the size of a giant tarantula emblazoned on his chest. He plays a skinhead neo-Nazi in Venice Beach, California, and screenwriter David McKenna has composed some shrewd tirades for him that push only slightly past standard white working-class resentment. Norton gives the young thug an ambiguous erotic allure; he's almost appealing. Everything else in this melodrama, directed and photographed by the British commercial director Tony Kaye, is to be regretted-the alternation between color (the present) and black-and-white (the past); the mopey performance by Edward Furlong as Norton's kid brother, who is haplessly turning into a skinhead himself; and the confused political implications of the story, especially the violent ending, which entirely reverses the direction in which the material has been going. Kaye's work is self-important and garish. The movie was taken away from him during the editing phase. It should have been. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker