American History X

American History X shows how two Los Angeles brothers are drawn into a neo-Nazi skinhead gang, and why one decides to get himself out of it. Derek is a very smart kid who has become the leader of a skinhead gang in Venice Beach, Calif. One night two black kids attempt to steal Derek's car, as the result of a playground feud, and he shoots them and curb stomps one of them. He's convicted of murder and sent to prison for three years. His brother Danny idolizes him, and tries to step into his brothers’ place when Derek goes to jail. Then Derek gets out of prison and tries to find a new direction for himself and Danny. Their family consists of a chronically sick mother and two sisters. Their father, a fireman, was shot and killed by black addicts while fighting a fire in a crack house in a black neighborhood. After his dad was killed he was interviewed on a news show and Derek blames his father's death on a list of racial targets. Later we learn it wasn't just his father's death that made him who he was, but his father's beliefs were and how his father would tutor him in racism. The most shocking and scary scenes are the ones where the skinheads are bonding. They are led by Derek's speeches and are fueled by drugs, alcohol, tattoos, heavy metal music. The skinheads think that in their world (the Venice area of L.A.) that all races are against any other race and hate any other race. The race hatred of the skinheads is the same as other gangs in that area but with different words and haircuts. The movie uses black and white to show the past, and color to show the day after Derek is released from prison. In prison, Derek underwent a slow transition from a white dominant gang figure to a loner and a brutal rape helped speed the process. When he is in prison Danny and his friends wreck a grocery run by immigrants. Danny and Derek are both good in school and both are taught by a black history teacher named Sweeney (Avery Brooks), who supplies the moral center of the film. While Derek was in prison he was assigned to the laundry, where his black co-worker begins to seem human to him. In the day after Derek got out of jail, there was an attack on two of his gang members and then later in the day Danny gets shot at his school by a black gang member. This movie was very powerful to me because I had no clue how intense the racism and violence is between gangs.

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