A powerful drama about a powerful social conflict.
The Hate U Give
Grade: A-
Director: George Tillman Jr (The Longest Ride)
Screenplay: Audrey Wells from Angie Thomas novel.
Cast: Amandla Stenberg (The Hunger Games), Anthony Mackie (Detroit)
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 2 hr 13 min
By: John DeSando
“Slang makes them look cool, but it makes me look hood.” Starr
White cop shoots black man—it’s been in the news in various forms for years because it easily, too easily, defines the racial divide now and maybe forever. George Tillman Jr. directs The Hate U Give gingerly and yet powerfully presenting the black citizen outrage side while giving a different perspective from the white cop side. In either case, the narrative is interesting and poignant, a great film on a difficult topic.
Starr Carter (Amandla Stenberg) is a 16-year-old black girl coming from a somewhat comfortable other side of the tracks while attending a private, white high school. At the local school “you go to get drunk, high, pregnant or killed.” (Starr)
She is hiding her address behind a beautiful soft black face, but not for long because she witnesses a white cop shoot her black friend, Khalil (Algee Smith), while he was reaching for a hairbrush that the officer thought was a gun.
Her struggle is whether to make her presence at the crime known to the community at large as she prepares for a grand jury inquiry. Beyond the complexity of her deciding to go public, and suffer the shunning of her white, privileged friends, is the real impediment of family and friends who have lived for years not standing up to police racism and indulging a fear of the police.
Although The Hate U Give may feel like the recent Monsters and Men, it is a more dramatic rendering of character, even for minor characters, and it clearly develops the plot with the arc of Starr’s defiance and defense. And speaking of defense, her Uncle Carlos (Common), lectures the family on the complexity of an officer’s decision when he decides to shoot a young man.
The analysis doesn’t feel like an admission of guilt as much as it does balance out either side of the argument. The film becomes believable with this speech.
The Hate U Give, although melodrama at times, has a Spike Lee feel to it of streets, gangs, and hope. The hope is real. The film is memorable.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
