BAD SKIN HEADS! BAD SKIN HEADS!
I think it’s kind of a mess, actually.
That kid from T2 needs to tone down his squeakiness.
great movie. brings back memories for me. i used to teach at venice high.
I agree with Matt, a total mess! Not very good at all.
I think it’s a good film, and it has something to say.
I’m yet to be sold on it being a great movie.
JP’s right. Jesus was he annoying, in both films really.
The film is a glorious testament to Edward Norton, not much more than that, though.
This is one of those good movies that people seem to hate on for some reason…you loved it in high school and now you are ashamed of it!
Its good for the acting alone, nice message, kinda naive…? Nah, I think there might be a misunderstanding where you have this idea of what a skin head is, where this film doesn’t present you with the stereotypical skin head, moreso the neglected white suburban kids who cling to the stereotypical idea of what a skin head is. I think its a nice movie for older kids/young teens to watch.
It’s not one to hate on. There are worse, more serious crimes in cinema that put this in the shade. AHX is a generic film about skinheads- which are typically cultural misreadings deliberately exploited for artistic or emotional hype… but where I think this film is different is in its intention— on the surface, an attempt to do something serious, intense, mainstream and raw simultaneously, which in and of itself is a vast ambition.
So… AHX is a fueled to the brim molotov cocktail, but with a soppy rag soaked in baby milk for a fuse.
It’s a bedtime, tuck-me-down picture book story for middle income bracket Americans— ideological temazepam, so they can sleep, which is important because they have to get up and tell someone else to do work tomorrow, and the economy relies on that.
You can waste a thousand matches trying to get AHX to light. That’s why it’s a sedative and not an explosive piece of cinema.
New Line makes this big sweeping gesture of a film and waves it in the face of a guilty Hollywood (racial stereotyping being something Hollywood has been shaping and juggling, culturally, for generations, from DW Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915) all the way through to the Schwarzenegger uber alpha aryan male, and beyond— into catastrophes like Crash ).
So the academies squirm and award it and disguise their reasoning behind rhetoric that obfuscates and appeals to candy apple pie illusions frosted with the crushed pill of apathy, and then they and NL and a bunch of happy exec.s and distributors push that pie into the face of generation next, shouting loud to be heard over the dwindling expectation levels and attention span, telling the world that AHX is now officially a serious, intense, cult, mainstream and raw film, simultaneously.
But the film is a contrived product on every level, and that gets sour after a while— those black and white flashbacks are cheesy. The dialog is false, forced. The whole thing, from screenplay up, starts to look like a bad excuse for some ‘iconic cinematography’, contrived to get ‘important’ ‘cinematic’ shots to emphasize ‘how very seriously’ the producers and the cast and the crew takes the subject matter (in that order). But Tony Kaye isn’t especially dynamic with his camerawork or actor direction, and that leaves Norton and co with no boundaries, no overstep marks— at points AHX feels lost between soap opera land and the spin dry setting on Spielberg’s emotional laundry machine. You have to give actors some sense of where the film is going, unless you are trying to create a disorientated performance, or one driven only by improv. And to cap it all, there’s this fifth wheel squeaking on the AHX wagon, and it’s the screenplay itself, which keeps screaming out— “HELLO I AM AN AWARD WINNING SCREENPLAY by DAVID MCKENNA (please)”
rant, blah etc etc.
I think it’s a good film. Edward Norton was pretty convincing as a skinhead (Edward Furlong? Not so much). And I really liked the way the film narrowed in on the predatory theme and “Tom Metzgerish” character. A good message, albeit predictable.
wow. tell us how you really feel!
It was okay, and then the ending made it awful. having the black kid actually shoot furlong in the school bathroom was absolutely ludicrous. Especially after they cruise by his house, to prove they know where to kill him somewhere that’s not a high school bathroom.
I think it was basically an attempt to be really edgy and make everyone yell OMG! That was so crazy/intense/raw/etc. I was suckered at firsts, admittedly, but I look back now, and it was just a manipulative mess of simplistic cliches and overwrought melodrama. Basically, not such a good movie.
Also, the skinhead movement is, from the ground up, built around the working class. Suburbanite skinheads are just poseurs.
WARNING MAJOR SPOILER!!!
The directing and editing was awful but I pretty liked the story and the ending but it should have end right after the dead guy shot and WITHOUT SLOW MOTION!!!! It would have make a ending as great as La Haine one…
P.s. Welcome back!
you think venice is the suburbs? you must not have been to LA recently, or ever. dont let the palm trees fool you. and surely dont let the beach fool you either.
Olivier – I believe the director accused Edward Norton of re-cutting the film to give him more screen time, but I have absolutely no idea about the validity of this claim.
Tony Kaye was apparenty very bummed out about the final cut of AHX, so much so that he apparently had his nose plugged with one hand the entire time he was shooting the film with the other hand. Whatever the original tent for the film was versus the final product, I believe the final product to be very memorable. It’s stayed with me.
I think the movie looks like a cheap melodrama… It should be “reduxed”…
Yeah, the problems during the production of this film are interesting. Kaye took the project even though he felt there were problems with the script. He agreed to work with Norton understanding that he “was really buying another writer.” Kaye apparently went ballistic when he was offered notes at the first screening of his cut, and was then locked out of the editing room, and eventually let Norton in instead. According to Kaye, his cut of the film was actually 40 minutes shorter than the final cut (which Kaye described as “crammed with shots of everyone crying in each other’s arms”). Kaye got the film pulled from the Toronto film festival and tried to get his name taken off the film, but the DGA denied his request.
…well, T bascially said it all for me, and then some.
Jello, how exactly is it “awe-inspiring”?
Jello Biafra
Amazing, Phenominal, Awe-inspiring