American History X

This is the sort of incendiary role a lot of actors would kill for, yet the shock of Norton's performance isn't its showboat flamboyance. It's that he makes this sadistic junior sociopath rueful and intelligent.Read Full Review »

An inflated yet gut-slugging film.Read Full Review »

While this movie is sometimes overbaked, it is the first major studio release in a while to engross wall-to-wall.Read Full Review »

May be flawed, but it's not easily forgotten.Read Full Review »

A series of well-drawn sketches and powerful scenes, in search of an organizing principle.Read Full Review »

Trenchant and visceral, American History X may not be perfect, but it's a darn sight better than good.Read Full Review »

It's a testament to Norton's utter immersion in the role that he can even halfway connect the dots between this fundamentally sweet, brainy kid and the magnetic, white trash monster who'll haunt our minds long after the movie's liberal pieties fade into static.Read Full Review »

This material is charged enough without piling on the melodrama and the lip-smacking violence. The movie too often sacrifices reportage for razzle-dazzle.Read Full Review »

It's hard to know whom to blame for the film's choppiness, its mixture of rage and sentimentality, the stridency of some of the acting.Read Full Review »

For all its surface verisimilitude and for all its focus on a problem that couldn't be more current, this film can't manage to feel more than sporadically real.Read Full Review »