The supporting cast includes Fairuza Balk, Stacy Keach, Elliott Gould, Avery Brooks, Ethan Suplee and Beverly D'Angelo.

The final version was longer than Kaye intended, which resulted in him publicly disowning the film, thus negatively affecting his directing career.

Danny must write a paper on his older brother Derek, Sweeney's former student and neo-Nazi leader, whose prison release is scheduled that day.

Years earlier, Danny and Derek's firefighter father is shot and killed by a black drug dealer while extinguishing a fire at their home.

A skilled basketball player, Derek defeats several Crips members, winning control of the local ball courts.

Derek's mother Doris invites Murray, her then boyfriend, to dinner, where an argument about Rodney King and the 1992 Los Angeles riots ensues.

Disillusioned by prison gang politics, Derek learns the Aryan Brotherhood is buying drugs from the Mexican Mafia and then selling to other White inmates.

Sweeney rebukes him for wanting to avoid dealing with the consequences of his actions, revealing his own racist past and warning that Danny has joined the D.O.C.

The next morning, Danny completes his paper, reflecting on how Derek initially adopted racist views from their father, as shown in a flashback.

Kaye, who had been De Luca's preferred choice from the beginning, accepted and made his directorial debut in a feature film on American History X.

The performances are explosive and frightening, and the film dramatically demonstrates both the subtle and overt roots of racism while also showing the possibility for redemption".

[10][11] According to executive producer Steve Tisch, Norton's passion for the project was "contagious", and he even agreed to a pay cut of more than $500,000 from his usual $1 million fee, to be cast in the lead.

[9] To prepare for the role, Norton increased his calorie intake and spent hours in the gym to gain 25 pounds (11 kg) of muscle.

He welcomed visitors on set, including singer Courtney Love, Norton's girlfriend at the time, and British historian John Richardson.

[5] He also discovered at the time a newsletter published by a British political group, the National Front, which said he was a prominent Jew who supposedly controlled Britain's media.

[5] The actors had "white power" tattoos painted on their arms, which Suplee forgot to remove one day after filming, and was confronted by a man in a convenience store.

He spent $100,000 on cryptic advertisements in the Hollywood press that quoted John Lennon and Abraham Lincoln, and condemned the behavior of Norton and the studio.

Kaye attempted to remove his name from the film credits, applying for various pseudonyms, including "Humpty Dumpty", a request that the Directors Guild of America (DGA) refused.

[7][11][20] Kaye disowned the film, describing the released version, which was 24 minutes longer than his own cut, as a "total abuse of creativity" and "crammed with shots of everyone crying in each other's arms".

The website's critical consensus reads, "American History X doesn't contend with its subject matter as fully as it could, but Edward Norton's performance gives this hard-hitting drama crucial weight.

He particularly praised Norton's performance, saying "His Derek mesmerizes even as he repels, and the actor fully exposes the human being behind the tough poses and attitudinizing".

[20] Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote "Though its story elements are all too easily reduced to a simple outline, American History X has enough fiery acting and provocative bombast to make its impact felt.

[36] Stephen Hunter, writing for The Washington Post, was highly critical of the film and gave it a negative review, calling it "an old melodramatic formula hidden under pretentious TV-commercial-slick photography".

[37] Michael O'Sullivan wrote "There are moments when Anne Dudley's string-laden score overpowers the stark simplicity of the film's message and other times when the moral of brotherly love is hammered a bit heavily", but conceded "the blunt and brutal American History X is ultimately only as imperfect as we ourselves are".

[38] Edward Norton was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Derek Vinyard, but lost to Roberto Benigni for Life Is Beautiful.

[39] In 1999, Amnesty International USA used American History X for an educational campaign, screening the film in colleges and in nationwide events for raising awareness on human rights.

[51] In response to the French screening, Sébastien Homer of L'Humanité wrote, "Police violence, the Rodney King affair, unsanitary prisons, ill-treatment, rejection of asylum seekers, the United States has still not assimilated what human rights, freedom, equality meant".

[18] Clayton Schuster of Vice drew comparisons between the film and both the racial rhetoric of Donald Trump and real life atrocities; the murders of nine African-Americans in a Charleston church in 2015, a far-right march in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, and a year later, a mass shooting in a Pittsburgh synagogue.

They're suited up in boots with red laces, heads gleaming from a fresh shave, and tatted with Nazi insignia and racist slogans.

[55] Writing for Esquire magazine in 2018, Justin Kirkland stated that he believed that "Perhaps the reason that American History X still feels so relevant two decades after its release is because we haven't done enough for it not to be ...