Question: What happened to Little Henry after he killed Danny in the bathroom?
Answer: This is what I'm trying to figure out - when he shot Danny he disappeared, he probably got away with it or he was arrested later on.
Answer: In the original ending he was supposed to be arrested. It is possible that he was arrested in the final version of the film too.
Question: What does D.O.C stand for?
Answer: The tattooed DOC on gang members' arms means Disciples of Christ - the gang that they belong to in the movie.
Question: We see something going on between the corrupt skinhead and the Hispanic criminal inside the prison, and it makes Vinyard leave that gang. What exactly was the arrangement by the skinheads to 'protect' Vinyard?
Answer: It's quite simple: He was one of them, a fellow skinhead. In prison different groups stick together for mutual protection and comradeship, and as neo-nazis/skinheads would be fairly unpopular with the colored inmates, all the more reason for them to protect each other.
Question: What was the point of the ending? What message was it trying to send? We have a whole movie sending an anti-racist message, but then a black guy kills Danny for blowing smoke in his face. I'm sure this wasn't the movie's intention, but it kinda seems like we're supposed to believe Derek was originally right and shouldn't have changed.
Chosen answer: No, the message is absolutely not that Derek was originally right. The last part just shows there is evil on both sides and not only the neo-nazis need change. Danny changed, but too late to be saved from being murdered for racist reasons. Its a classic Shakespearean tragedy.
Answer: In the original unaired ending of the movie, it shows Derek staring in the mirror at his home. He takes his shirt off exposing his swastika, then you see hair falling into the sink as he shaves his head.
Anywhere to find that alternate ending?
Question: How does curb stomping someone kill them? It will obviously destroy their teeth, but it doesn't look very fatal.
Answer: The stomp is to the neck. It breaks the neck and causes death.
Chosen answer: "Curb stomping" is a form of assault in which a victim's mouth is forcefully placed on a curb after which the head stomped from behind. Depending on the force of the stomping, the practice may, indeed, cause severe injuries and sometimes death. Any time you have a person's head being crushed between a hard, immovable object and an object moving with force, it is not unreasonable to posit that death can result - either immediately from the trauma, or later due to internal injury and bleeding.
Question: How did Sweeney know Derek got raped? How and why would Derek ask for his old history teacher to come visit him instead of anyone else, like his family?
Chosen answer: Someone would have told Sweeney what happened (guard, nurse etc.). Derek would have called Sweeney down because he did not want his family to know that he got raped, because it might make him look helpless and destroy his image. Sweeney was really the only person he knew that wasn't a skin-head.
Answer: It's heavily implied that Sweeney, through his gang outreach initiatives which are mentioned in the police station scene, had a relationship with Derek in which he tried to get him out of the skinhead lifestyle. With the sexual assault and betrayal from his fellow skinheads being the catalyst for his skinhead "deprogramming", he called Sweeney because he knew that he wouldn't judge him and that he could talk to him about how his feelings about skinhead life had changed.
Question: At the start of the film, Danny is given the paper and told he has to hand it in the next morning. At the end, Danny is at school ready to hand it in. Does that mean that aside from the black-and-white flashback scenes, the movie took place over 24 hours? It's hard to believe so much happened in such a short amount of time.
Chosen answer: Yes, apart from the flashbacks the whole movie is set over 24 hours.
Question: During the basketball game near the start of the film, what does Danny say to Seth after Seth gets into the bet with the black guy that makes him say, "Danny, when I want your opinion I'll ask for it"?
Answer: Danny says "It's 8-6, Seth" meaning that the black guys only need to score 2 more hoops, whilst Seth's team needs 4. Danny doesn't believe Seth can win, so he is reminding him what the score actually is.
Question: What accent did Sweeney have? It sounded like he was from a foreign country but moved to America when he was young.
Chosen answer: It's Avery Brooks' natural Indiana accent.
Question: How much time did Derek do? Also, Derek killed a couple guys, and his black friend stole a TV, so how could he have gotten out sooner than his friend?
Answer: The difference in their punishment is one of the major points of the film. It's about racial injustice, and that black offenders get harsher punishments than white offenders. For the friend, it isn't stealing the TV that gets him the long sentence. It's that he dropped it on the cop's foot which the prosecutor twisted into in attempted murder charge. Derek did a few years for killing the one guy, but as he was white, the dead guy black, and Derek was, at least at the beginning of the events, defending his home, property, and arguably the lives of his family and himself, his sentence wasn't nearly as harsh.
Question: The family's front door swings out rather than in. I know in places such as Florida, this is due to the hurricane weather so the door does not get blown in. However, in this movie, the family resides in California. We don't have front doors that swing outwards because we do not have hurricanes. Was this a mistake or was there a reason for the door to swing out?
Answer: Just because it's uncommon or even rare for an outer door to swing outwards, doesn't make it a mistake or even special.
Answer: It was probably (or close to being) a "revealing mistake" - how something was done for movie "convenience" or effect. It is much easier, faster, and dramatic if someone can run out of the house and immediately attack someone compared to having to take time to "open the door" (inward, like it is usually done).
Question: When did the Vinyards have to move into the apartment? Had Derek taken over the mortgage after his Dad died? So when he got locked up the payments stopped?
Answer: Bail, lawyers and court costs are very expensive, they most likely mortgaged, sold and borrowed what ever they could for his defense.
Question: Why did Little Henry kill Danny? Was it a revenge for something?
Answer: It was because he got "punked" by Danny the previous day. He lost face and he took revenge by shooting him.
Answer: He was probably told to kill him to be allowed in a gang. For the gang it was a racist motive. They hate us so we hate them. Provoke us enough and we kill you. It would send out a clear message to the white supremacists.
Answer: We don't find that out. It happens right at the end of the film, and we don't get to see the aftermath.
Purple_Girl