For those who have seen both Romper Stomper and American History X, I wanna know who do you guys think delivers more menacing gesture? Is it Hando or Derek?
I guess I'll put my stake on Derek, despite of his later consciousness. It's the way that he spoke that makes him a convincing yet dangerous Skinhead rather than Hando with a more erupting way. I guess it's the viciously smart type like Derek that we really should aware of. But That's me.
What the hell kinda name is Hando anyway??
I don't love her.. She kicked me in the face!!
I have to say Derek he was raw and uncut and smart. He know what to say to get people pumped up and ready for war.
shareI'd say Hando, more menacing, more evil, and followed what he believed from day one (or at least seems that way from the film) Derek to me was a smart yet vulnerable angry young guy that had a Dad that was sick of seeing black guys getting jobs just because they are black, that sub conscience stuck with Derek and Cameron exploited it and moulded Derek into his perfect weapon, after his Dad was murdered by black guys.
shareI don’t think the two characters are comparable.
When Hando saw his ‘enemy’ he flew into uncontrollable rages. While he was clever, he had little self-control. (Remember when the neo-Nazis were trapped in their building? Hando was screaming for a final stand and only gave up when he saw that nobody would follow him.)
Then we had Derek who had his ‘enemy’ at gunpoint. The fight was over. Derek told the car thief to bite the kerb, then scanned the area for potential witnesses. Finding none, except for his compliant brother, he smiled and kicked the thief in the head. This was tepid-blooded (given what had happened previously) and calculated murder.
What I cannot understand is what Derek was calculating. Was he considering how much gaol time he’d get for the murder, given the circumstances? Was he considering the PR implications for race-hate groups? I have no idea.
This is one of several reasons why I think American History X is absurd to the point where it's hard to suspend your disbelief, and fall into the film's world. Here are some more reasons why I felt this way.
- Who on earth converts from being a happy, compliant student, who’s interested in Black Literature, to a neo-Nazi over the course of a chat with dad over breakfast? In that scene, Derek was supposed to be a smart and smart teenagers do not just accept race-hate on their father’s say-so. (Teenaged sons and fathers are supposed to clash.)
- Who on earth goes into a brutal gaol system and comes out a better man? While it’s all explained quite well in the film, the idea of gaols as a place where people become nicer is statistically pretty silly. Perhaps the writer wanted to explore the exception to the statistical fact, but I had trouble believing it.
- Who, like Derek’s younger brother, spends three years in a neo-Nazi gang and then does a 180 degree turn, because their brother says so?
Psychologically, American History X is absurd - so absurd that it breaks one's suspension of disbelief, arouses one's critical faculties and makes it obvious that the film is well-meaning propaganda.
Sadly, any half-clever young proto-racist will see through this in a nanosecond, so it fails even as propaganda.
In contrast, Romper Stomper is so non-preachy that it might accidentally have made a few (stupid) neo-Nazi converts, but I think it redeems itself because the smarter teenagers who saw it would have understood one of the film’s messages: that these gangs are filled with losers and have no future.
Returning to the question in the OP, I’d be more scared of Hando, because his existence was, and remains, a real possibility. (Big props to Russell Crowe for that feral look of joy in his eyes before the fight scenes. I don’t know if it was acting, but perhaps the best person to play a street thug is a street brawler.)
Derek was just a character from a well-meaning, anti-hate film. Given that the probability of meeting someone like Derek is roughly the same as meeting a dragon or a hobbit, it's hard to take his acting seriously. (Norton did a fairly good job of being a thug in the pre-prison scenes, but not quite as good as Crowe.)