Like an afterschool special...
What a waste of two really strong performances. The plot, the message the film was meant to convey and the characters are flat and uninspired.
Derrick and Daniel are just about perfect- smart, charismatic, family oriented, loyal, girls love them, Derrick has a good job before prison, etc. The only flaw is that they're Nazis- and of course that's only because Black men killed their dad and the anger drove them to it. Even the racism isn't the nasty KKK kind- it's (mostly) calm, reasoned arguments that reference crime stats, immigration policy and civic engagement. Plus their resentment that the Jewish teacher is interested in the mom.
They're so perfect that Magical Negro #1 (Sweeney) is willing to look past the racism and murder to save them both from themselves. Magical Negro #2 uses his considerable influence to keep Derrick alive in prison once he ditches the prison gang (which he does because they aren't hardcore enough, not because he has respect for his Black guardian angels.)
Can't have a magical Negro without a contrasting Black villain and the interchangeable Black gang members are it. They're aggressive, they provoke people, their deaths don't even merit a four year prison term, they're overconfident and totally ineffective at everything. Derrick beats them at basketball, he stumbles out of bed with his dick out to beat three of them in a gunfight, he survives all that time (even before he's in the prison gang) without anything happening to him. Only guy who gets anything done is Henry and he kills one of our heroes in a setting where he's guaranteed to get caught. The conflict with Henry and Daniel isn't fleshed out enough to make the ending credible.
All the women in the film are lemmings or losers. Seth is an idiot. Cameron should be more important but he really isn't. The lack of Latinos and the fascination with the curb stomp are very weird. The usage of black and white was corny. The message doesn't work because what the film tries to pass as extreme Nazi propaganda justified by tragedy is just regular casual American racism that was there before the tragedy. Do these guys deserve sympathy? They can quit the Nazi thing without really seeing the humanity in minorities and still fit into society just fine so is it really character growth? And does it still happen after Daniel's death? People say this is so much more authentic than Crash but it's just leaning on a different base set of cliches.