10. Derek Vinyard - American History X (1998)
Derek and Danny are two brothers. Their father Dennis is a mild-moderate racist who works as a firefighter. While putting out a fire in a drug den, Dennis is killed by black drug dealers. This pushes Derek over the edge so that he can devote his life to Neo Nazi activity. After Danny alerts him one night that thieves are trying to steal his car, Derek grabs a gun, shoots one of the men and curb stamps another. He is sent to jail. In jail Derek joins the Aryan Brotherhood but becomes disillusioned. When he voices dissent over their actions, the Aryans beat and rape him in the shower. He leaves prison a changed man and now he has to go and rescue Danny from the Neo Nazis as Danny is heading down the same Route that Derek took. He thinks he can save him but Danny's racist actions have profound implications. With choosing this film, I wanted to show that Nazism still exists in the world today. American History X is a brutal but brilliant film - a powerful statement about racism and racially motivated violence. The disillusionment of Derek about the Nazis in prison finally opens his eyes to the futility of racism. Violent racial hate crimes go down a senseless path of killing people for no good reason than they are a different skin colour or ethnicity. Edward Norton does a brilliant and highly convincing portrait of a sadistic, ideologically skewed Nazi killer who forsakes that life with repentance and becomes a normal guy again. The film stops short of simple moralising, but the ending is just devastating. It is unusual in these films that we find a repentant Nazi