American History X

SAVAGE, disturbing and fiercely moral, the searingly powerful American History X - something of an American cousin to Romper Stomper - follows hot on the heels of Arlington Road and anticipates the similarly-themed Apt Pupil.

All three films concern themselves to varying degrees with the upsurge in right-wing American terrorism, but while the other two are essentially psychological drama/thrillers with secondary political subtexts, History goes right for the jugular, serving up an uncompromising and unremittingly violent drama that stimulates the grey matter just as effectively as it stuns the gut.

The film also heralds the A-list arrival of Edward Norton, who displayed enormous promise in Primal Fear and Larry Flynt, and looks all set for a glittering career. His performance here is nothing short of astonishing, as he sinks his teeth into the role of Derek Vinyard, an articulate young man whose brain is in fine working order, but whose body is a temple of hatred liberally decorated with swastikas and White Power slogans.

Over the course of the narrative, his extreme white-supremacist beliefs have direct or indirect effects on all those around him, most notably his kid brother (Edward Furlong) who idolises him and strives to be like him in every way. The unforgettable opening scene sucks you straight in - a stunningly shot black-and-white sequence depicting a race killing executed by our avenging anti-hero, who is instantly arrested and triumphantly raises his hands above his head, the defiant expression of savage vindication on his face one of the most chilling sights in recent memory.

American History opts to tell its story using a back-and-forth time-frame, and is filmed alternately in colour and monochrome, for reasons which become apparent as the film progresses. Norton's performance is superhuman, but every actor in sight does the script ample justice, with intensity dripping from all of them. Furlong is massively impressive as a fundamentally good-natured kid who falls victim to noxious ideological contamination, while the truly godlike Fairuza Balk (The Craft) shines as blindingly as ever in a sadly under-developed role as Norton's poison-hearted girlfriend.

The American Far Right is, of course, a fractured and thankfully unco-ordinated beast, riven by its own internal sectarian divisions as well as by the culture of universal paranoia and mistrust. There are no God-and-the-gun militias or KKK men to be seen in American History. Instead, the fascist protagonists here are bog-ordinary, otherwise unremarkable urban working-class white trash, who perceive their social position to be on the slide relative to blacks and immigrants, and whose withering anger at the state of society is focused in all the wrong directions.

Their anger finds its outlet in a number of incendiary speeches which chill the blood to the very marrow, and in sporadic outbursts of ferocious violence - much of it miles too graphic for the average viewer to stomach, and depicted with such unflinching relish there is a very real danger that the film might be misappropriated Romper Stomper-style by the wrong kind of audience. However, they would be leaving themselves open to the prospect of conversion and enlightenment, since this ferociously intelligent but brilliantly directed movie offers a mass of subtle observations which lead to conclusions diametrically opposed to those reached by the film's strangely pathetic subjects.

Chilling, awesomely dramatic, and infused with enormous humanity in spite of its grisly subject matter, American History X is perhaps the most truly important film to reach our screens since I took this job. Watch it at the earliest available opportunity,