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But it was his performance as Derek Vinyard in American History X that I fell in love with, because it was as Derek Vinyard that he was topless, chiseled, goateed, tattooed, immaculate, fit, assertive, masculine and principled.Only, by "principled" I mean he plays a violent, despicable neo-Nazi; and by "tattooed" I mean he has a fucking swastika on his chest – which is enough to repel any teenager with at least some sense of what's right and what's wrong. There's nothing wrong, however, with being topless, chiseled, goateed, immaculate, fit, assertive and masculine. What teenage boy doesn't want to be all of those all at once? But a fascist? Needless to say, I was conflicted.I didn't see American History X until I was about 14 or 15, in the early-to-mid 2000s, some way into what, for the sake of argument, we'll call an "advanced interest in cinema." The Godfather, Goodfellas, Casino, Scarface—I'd seen them all and was handsomely equipped to start filling in the gaps of what was to be a formative adolescence with the impossibly quick-witted shtick of Romper Stomper, Chopper, and some of the films Guy Ritchie made before he turned Sherlock Holmes into a steampunk sociopath.
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