National Post (National Edition)
The Hate U Give
A confession: Much as I love turning movie titles into acronyms — Dawn of the Planet of the Apes = DOTPOTA, and don’t even get me started on Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow — I did not realize that the title The Hate U Give is the first half of rapper Tupac’s THUG LIFE — i.e., The Hate U Give Little Infants F---s Everyone.
So maybe The Hate U Give is not a movie directed at aging white critics. But if this one can be moved almost to tears by the story of a resilient black American teenager facing a world of prejudice, sexism and violence, then director George Tillman Jr. (Faster, Notorious) has crafted a story that will speak to anyone willing to listen.
The film features an Oscar-worthy performance by 19-year-old Amanda Stenberg as Starr Carter, growing up in the fictional but mostly black neighbourhood of Garden Heights, and attending a mostly white school.
Streetwise but also just plain wise, Starr has learned how to compartmentalize the two sides of her life, even down to her vocabulary. For her classmates, she notes, “Slang makes them cool; slang makes me ‘hood.”
She’s helped in her balancing act by her dad (Russell Hornsby), seen in the first scene giving Starr and her siblings The Talk. Nope, not that talk; he wants his kids to know their rights, but also to know how to react (or not) when confronted by police. Unfortunately, her childhood friend Khalil (Algee Smith) doesn’t play by those rules, setting up a tragedy that then dominoes into a world of consequences for the young woman.
The Hate U Give is based on the young-adult novel by Angie Thomas, and adapted by Audrey Wells, a filmmaker who died of cancer just one week ago. It’s not a perfect film — Starr’s internal monologue gets a bit tiring, especially when the actor can express volumes with a twitch of her face. And a few characters seem underwritten.
But these are minor quibbles compared to the power of the narrative. Standouts in the cast include Common as Starr’s uncle, a black police officer who admits to racial profiling; and K.J. Apa as her boyfriend, whose understanding of the racial divide between them straddles an endearing line between knowledge and naiveté, and provides a few perfect moments of comic relief.
The mood of the film swings between despair and hope, as does the performance of its star. You wonder when she’s going to break, and what that will mean. I said Stenberg can say so much with a twitch. But you can’t just twitch forever. ½
The Hate U Give opens Oct. 12 in Toronto, and Oct. 19 across Canada.