SCREEN

American Hardcore presents this niche music as the last spontaneous moment in rock, before Nirvana taught labels how to turn rebellion into money. As evidence, American Hardcore ably documents the rise of the scenes in Boston, LA and Washington, D.C., focusing on Minor Threat, Black Flag and SS Decontrol. There is much vintage footage, but if you are not familiar with this music, the poor sound and picture quality will not carry the impact the musicians and fans interviewed here claim the music had.

In fact, the weakness of American Hardcore is that in its desire to present hardcore as a movement, the film favors the generic and ignores many distinctive groups that emerged from various scenes. Bands such as X, Minutemen, Husker Du, Sonic Youth, The Replacements and Meat Puppets barely get name-checked. Yet all were crucial to the development of hardcore. Other groups that don't fit cleanly into the narrative aren't mentioned at all. Even The Dead Kennedys, a marquee act in any account of American hardcore, are given short shrift here.

Also, no insight is offered into the incredible, sometimes violent factionalism that drove the hardcore scene: straight-edge vs. indulgers, punk vs. metal, Nazi skinheads vs. anarchist skinheads. Even without the skinheads, otherwise politically progressive hardcore was routinely homophobic and offered rampant lyrical misogyny; American Hardcore ignores this complex reality, preferring a mythology that owes too much to nostalgia and a you-should-have-been-there vibe. The present is ignored, which is a pity, because examining the backgrounds of the interviews with old musicians and fans, there are tantalizing hints of how the scene must have impacted the adulthood of the kids who made it.

American Hardcore reminds us of hardcore's musical importance—but it doesn't explain why so many are still inspired by this two-decade-old music or why they still talk about it with such passion.