Oh wow….I’ve suddenly found myself, like, 6 weeks behind on my film screenings. I’m going to dig out of it, but it’s going to take some time!
Like many younger brothers, high schooler Danny Vinyard idolizes his older brother Derek. The thing is, Derek is a neo-nazi leader who is getting out of prison after serving a sentence for manslaughter, having brutally executed a black man who tried to steal his truck. Danny is low-key excited to show off his swastika flags and how he’s connected with the local white supremacist gang (the Disciples of Christ), but now Derek seems disinterested and downright discouraging. It ends up, after 3 years in jail, Derek wants out. He saw the hypocrisy of the movement and received care and guidance from his former principal, a black man, Dr. Bob Sweeney. Derek’s exit causes a rift with the D.O.C. and puts the Vinyards safety in jeopardy. And as the film shows, both hate and anti-hate are seeds that plant early on, which risk growing into violent chaos.
I knew that this was the “skinhead” movie, but I had no idea what I was getting into. And I certainly didn’t think I’d be asked to go on an empathy-building journey with a reforming white supremacist. Derek and Danny Vinyard are fascinating character studies. Ideology aside, they are each likable family boys who, throughout the course of the movie, come to reckon with how they devolved into white supremacy and show signs of rehabilitation. Derek, of course, we see commit an disgustingly brutal hate crime, and we’re not necessarily willing to forgive him for it, but we begin to believe he pas the potential to become a good person again. And I love how the film flips the “white teacher teaches intercity kids” trope by having the brilliant Avery Brooks be an uplifting force for these lost white boys.
The film is instructive in its ability to show how hatred can grow in the shadows until it’s ready to rear its ugly head. I wish was just a ‘90s, post LA-riots case study and lesson. But we never seem to have dealt with it then, and we aren’t dealing with it now. Having recently watched the video of the Patriot Front losers cosplaying as soldiers, this film is as important now as it’s ever been. A reminder that hate doesn’t start in some field doing drills of bad phalanxes—it starts by rearing its ugly head early on, at the dinner table.