This time - American History X.
Bleak films about racist neo-Nazis are not generally my cup of tea, so I hadn't bothered catching up with this one until now.
It was better than I expected, perhaps because I hadn't realised that it was actually a redemption story, and so had the spark of old fashioned optimism about it. It's not perfect, and I had not realised (or had forgotten if I had read it before) that the director had disowned the film when it came out - a very serious case of "creative differences" between him and the studio, obviously. A lot of the acting was very good, but that black teacher hero was a bit over the top in solemn earnestness.
By far the most surprising thing was the unpleasant realisation about how much of the speech the neo-Nazi Norton makes to his buddies (before they trash a Korean run supermarket) could have come straight out of a Donald Trump campaign rally:
Distressingly, it seems that the person who posted that to Youtube did so because of approval of the sentiment in the speech, and lots of comments agree with him. Which goes to show the healthy state of the American mindset under Trump. [Sarcasm, of course.]
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