“The Hate U Give” is one of the year’s best films.
This year has been a watershed moment for the portrayals of black lives on the big screen. From the fantastical (“Black Panther,” “A Wrinkle in Time”) to the biographical (“BlacKkKlansman”), the absurd (“Sorry to Bother You”) to the sobering (“Blindspotting”), black imagery has rarely been so prevalent yet so varied.
“The Hate U Give,” George Tillman Jr.’s powerhouse and bighearted adaptation of Angie Thomas’ young-adult best-seller, adds a new dimension to this wave, as it’s ultimately a bracingly optimistic family film but one grounded in the grim reality of today’s headlines.
Amandla Sternberg (“Everything, Everything”) is Starr Carter, a black high school teen in a struggling, working-class neighborhood whose parents — Lisa (Regina Hall) and Maverick (Russell Hornsby) — work hard to send Starr and her siblings to a private, largely white school. Starr says she feels like two different people, one who behaves one way when she’s hanging with her black friends at home — like Kenya (an endearing Dominique Fishback from the TV series “The Deuce”) — and another when she’s at school, where she pals around with well-off Hailey (Sabrina Carpenter), Maya (Megan Lawless) and part-time boyfriend Chris (K.J. Apa, “Riverdale”).
Starr is as dextrous at codeswitching as a Cirque du Soleil performer on a high-wire, and as long as she keeps her two universes apart, she’s cool. But those realms come crashing together one night and, like matter colliding with antimatter, the results are disastrous.
She stumbles across childhood friend/first crush, Khalil (Algee Smith), at a house party in her neighborhood, but the warmth of reunion soon turns cold when gunshots ring out, sending partygoers stampeding into the street. Khalil offers her a ride home, and that’s where Starr discovers she’s got a good news/bad news situation on her hands. The good news
is she still has feelings for the guy, and the bad news is that the guy is now working for the area’s biggest dope dealer, King (Anthony Mackie from the “Avengers” movies).
But that turns out to be a secondary issue that night. A white cop pulls Khalil’s car over and, despite Starr pleading for him to
stay calm and not talk back, he reaches for a hair brush that the policeman mistakes for a gun. A second later, Khalil is shot to death in front of her.
In addition to dealing with the trauma of seeing a friend murdered, Starr finds herself in a vice. On the one hand, neighborhood activists — led by April Ofrah (Issa Rae, “Insecure”) — want her to testify in front of the grand jury in order to get the policeman put away, shine light on the systemic failures that go back decades and not let Khalil die in vain. Meanwhile, her mom fears what might happen to her if she becomes a public figure, while King threatens payback if she spills the beans that Khalil worked for him. That’s a lot of pressure on a teenager’s slender shoulders.
On top of that, with the case splashed all over the headlines, she can’t keep her school friends from finding out about her other, less pampered reality.
Though it’s obvious where the audience’s sympathies are supposed to rest, what could have been heavy-handed and preachy is more subtle and layered, thanks to the sure-handed direction of Tillman (“Soul Food”), based on a script by Audrey Wells (“Under the Tuscan Sun”). While the film’s young-adult roots mean there are moments that feel contrived, it’s remarkable that almost everyone — black, white, cop, civilian — comes across as human. Starr’s uncle, Carlos (Common), is a policeman with a compelling scene where he admits to her what goes through his head when he has a difficult encounter while on the job.
The one exception is Hailey, who could be an entire “Afterschool Special” about entitled, fake “woke” allies.
Ultimately, “The Hate U Give” — whose title is based on a line from 2Pac — is a life-affirming rebuttal to apathy, despair and surrender. It’s also one of the year’s most important films.