Hate U Give's Critic – Amandla Stenberg Shines in Radical Hardcore Movie | Movie

AThomas's best selling bestseller, The Hate U Give, was commended last year for his thoughtful analysis of the effects of police brutality on a black teenager. A year later, director George Tillman Jr (Notorious, The Longest Yard) made a bold and deeply ingrained adaptation, inspired by the heavyweight performance of Hunger Games star Amandla Stenberg.

Stenberg plays Starr Carter, a teenage girl who lives with her parents and two brothers in the difficult (fictional) neighborhood of Garden Heights. Starr's father, Maverick (Russell Hornsby) is a former gang member who became a community leader, eager to imprint upon his children both the importance of black pride and the dangers of being a person of color in an institutionalized nation. At the beginning of the film, he delivers "The Explanation," the ominous but necessary explanation of how to negotiate a police encounter given by each African-American father to his children.

Garden Heights Local High School is, in Starr's words, "you'll get drunk, be high, pregnant or killed"; The children attend an elite and mainly white private school. Over time, Starr learned to change the code between these two worlds, existing as normal Starr in Garden Heights and "Starr version 2" in school. Although her white classmates have co-opted the language, clothing, and culture of Black America, Starr v.2 knows she must be as discreet as possible to avoid being stereotyped. ("The slang makes them look cool, but it makes me look like a hoodie," she notes curtly.)

Externally, this tactic seems to serve her well: she is considered a model student, is popular with her classmates and has a handsome boyfriend (KJ Apa) – although some girls at school have had the opportunity Ugly air The racial relationship points out that bigotry is always below the surface.

Back at Garden Heights, Starr attends a party where she meets Khalil, her childhood friend and first creature, who is now working as a low-level reseller. Khalil offers to bring her home, but on the way, a white policeman stops the two without reason. Remembering his father's advice, Starr bows down on the dashboard, but Khalil, understandably, does not want to play with this racial profiling board game and is ordered out of the car. When he innocently reaches through the window a hairbrush, the policeman fires him deadly, and Starr, restrained by the panic agent, is forced to see his friend emptying her blood.

This is a very painful time, especially in the context of a film that is apparently a teen movie, and Tillman Jr refuses to soften or downplay it. Horrible too, the dehumanizing interview that Starr undergoes at the police station immediately after, where police officers choose to blame the victims and mount a case against Khalil – and by extension Starr – rather than checking the truth.

Any opportunity that Starr has to deal with or complain about the incident is reduced, while competing factions try to use it for their own purposes. A lawyer and an activist (interpreted by Issa Rae) urges him to speak publicly about his experiences, despite the very obvious risks that such a move will entail. The local gang leader, King (Anthony Mackie), relies on her to keep quiet, for fear of implicating her by talking about Khalil's trade. And as her school-made version gives way to something more authentic, Starr's classmates turn to her, exposing their true prejudices. This is the only Starr family that remains unqualified, Regina Hall excelling as a cautious and composed mother.

Throughout hatred U Give, Audrey Wells and screenwriter Audrey Wells pay attention to the complexity of the issues raised by the reactions of her teenage character, so that when Starr adopts social activism, it's a moment that takes really feels. This is the emotional Sturm und Drang of YA, but used to serve great themes. This helps Stenberg to have an actor capable of making big mourning scenes without falling into melodrama. It must be said that the Hate U Give comes at a pace of two hours and 12 minutes, with a culminating scene that seems a little exaggerated emotionally, although it is hardly incompatible with most of the genre YA. .

Like Thomas's original novel, banned by Texas schools, The Hate U Give is likely to anger some. You think, however, that it will move a lot more. This is a mass entertainment with a radical addiction for a teen movie.