LOVE & ‘HATE’
Stenberg spellbinding as girl whose life is torn apart by a police shooting
At times an extremely powerful Black Lives Matter-era parable for our times, at others a less serious drama-cum-romantic comedy about the trials and tribulations of a beautiful young black woman attending a posh white prep school, “The Hate U Give” takes its title from a line by Tupac Shakur about how our parents teach us to hate each other as very young children. In the case of Starr Carter (a breakout performance by Amandla Stenberg), she has been taught many things by her devoted and hardworking parents, Lisa (Regina Hall) and grocery store owner and ex-con Maverick “Mav” Carter (Russell Hornsby). This is in part because Garden Heights, the African-American community where they live with younger sons Seven (Lamar Johnson) and Sekani (T.J. Wright), is a kind of mini-Compton, where the drug-dealing gang the King Lords is headed by the ruthless King (Anthony Mackie), a former compatriot of Mav’s, who whirls around the Heights in a black BMW instead of a swirling black cloak. Starr has already lost a childhood best friend with whom she used to play Harry Potter games to a gang-related drive-by. In opening scenes, Starr and her brothers are taught by their father
how to respond if the police ever pull them over. At school, Starr reminds us in the film’s extensive voiceovers how she has a switch in her head that she turns off in order to become the non-threatening AfricanAmerican girl, who is extremely tolerant of the pseudo-black antics of white rich kids, including her white best friends at school Hailey (Sabrina Carpenter) and Maya (Megan Lawless). These privileged white adolescents, whose Range Rovers and Porsches are parked in the school lot, have no clue what it’s like to live in a tough neighbor- hood with friends and family members who struggle every day. Starr even has a white boyfriend at school named Chris (a very good K.J. Apa, “Riverdale”), who listens and dances to D.J. Khaled on his phone and has yet to meet her sure-todisapprove father (prom is coming up). The film’s action centers around the fatal police shooting of a young black man witnessed by Starr that will inflame old rivalries and force her to testify and place her family at the center of an explosive racial controversy. Things get messy, both literally and in terms of the film’s focus and good intentions. But it was fun to hear about how “Harry Potter” is really all about gang life. Based on a YA novel by Jackson, Miss.-born Angie Thomas, adapted by Audrey Wells and directed by George Tillman Jr. (“The Longest Ride,” “Faster”), “The Hate U Give” is not perfect. But the cast is first-rate. Stenberg is a star on a rocketing rise, and the film is very wise in the ways that race remains a confounding source of discord and distrust in America. (“The Hate U Give” contains violence, profanity, drug references and suggestive content.)