We are never prouder of the widowed mother of four (Beverly D'Angelo) whose oldest son (Edward Norton) spends years in a violently racist frame of mind than when she responds thusly to his query as to whether she is ashamed to have invited a Jewish boyfriend (Elliot Gould) to have dinner with them. When she is shown kneeling at the curb, presumably to ask God for strength, after he drives off, we realize it took everything she had not to climb in his car and put some distance between herself and her son, who a few moments ago was brandishing the swastika tattoo on his chest as though it could kill the boyfriend by itself and trying to choke his sister with red meat. It would be unacceptable to abandon three children who still need her help and may profit from her guidance. In the end, though, her second son Danny (Edward Furlong) profits neither from her guidance, nor from Derek's after the older son has returned to something approaching sanity with the help of Dr. Sweeney (Avery Brooks in probably his best role ever).

The five epinions members who gave the original version of this review a "Somewhat Helpful" were entirely right to call my stopping after that paragraph a sin of omission. I need to talk more about Derek himself. Derek had gone further into the world of neo-Nazi skinheads than Danny, and had actually killed two black would-be car thieves, which of course means that he was more in need of redemption than Danny. (And he isn't the only one. If you ever want to be shocked, find out how many of your friends believe the death penalty is appropriate for grand theft auto. It's more than you think. People take the wrong lesson from the fact that in the old West, they hanged horse thieves.)

The key to Derek's character is his belief that all his violence was for a righteous cause. When not beating up minorities, the skinheads in this movie generally are alert enough to discern people who are not totally convinced their own cause is righteous (one of them can think of nothing worse to call Derek's mother than "a f@3!ing Democrat"). In prison, he discovers this is not so. His black co-worker in the laundry, Lincoln, is the only person in prison who can make him laugh, whereas he is disgusted at the drug dealing of Aryan Brotherhood members. After they rape him, Sweeney, his high school history teacher, appears to remind him it's not too late to change his life for the better. Rather than become the Aryans' inflatable lover, Derek readies himself for death.

But he survives prison, and returns to Los Angeles to save his brother from neo-Nazi organizer Cameron (Stacy Keach), whom he once worshipped, but now sees as a "chickenhawk". The strongest hint that Danny will die instead comes in a scene where Derek is back in his house showering, just after he and Danny have taken down all the Nazi memorabilia from their room. For once the shower is a place for blissful reminiscience instead of fear, and Derek remembers he and his brother playing on a beach when Danny was not yet two. We get a closeup of Danny's wondrous expression as a flock of birds flies out to sea, a level of innocence which only a toddler could muster. Then Derek steps out of the shower and looks at himself in the mirror. He has let his hair grow back to a reasonable length, but the huge swastika tattoo on his chest remains, ineradicable as the evil he has done, and he sees it now for what it is, a scarlet letter.

"What did I do?" Derek asks as he cradles his brother's body at the end of the movie. I wonder if Adolf Hitler ever asked that question, or will ask it on Judgment Day. The answer is that he woke up the West by treating other Europeans in the same way they had treated indigenous people since Columbus. Let this film be a wake-up call for us today.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age