The Hate U Give

Synopsis: Starr Carter (Amandla Stenberg) is a prep school student who witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend at the hands of a police officer. Facing pressure from all sides, she must find her voice and decide to stand up for what's right.

The Hate U Give is a passionate cry for racial justice in America that for the most part engages, only losing its hold in the latter stages when an excess of narrative contrivance and a tendency to a heavy hand blunt its effect.  Adapted from Angie Thomas’s best-selling 2017 young adult novel which is presumably also the source of those weakness, had writer Audrey Wells’ and director George Tillman Jr. redirected their film to a more mature audience it may well have taken its place with Spike Lee’s classic race polemic Do the Right Thing,1989. Despite not reaching those heights The Hate U Give \ is still an often-moving film and from an Antipodean point of view an eye-opening exposé of the continuing presence of racial prejudice in post-Obama America.

From the get-go in which via a voice-over Starr introduces her working class family at home in Garden Heights (a fictional suburb in Atlanta, Georgia) and explains how her parents have sent she and her siblings to a predominantly white private school in order that they will be able to escape the vicious circle of black poverty, drug use and violence, director Tillman’s approach is so televisually bland as to be disconcerting. Then the key event, the fatal shooting of Starr’s lifelong friend Khalil (Algee Smith) occurs. One hopes the film will develop some attitude but it continues in its reasonable hands-off way with Starr appearing to be an improbably articulate and level-headed individual as the narrative dutifully and programmatically explores its issues.

Looking on the bright side the film is thoughtful enough about its issues and hits its targets often enough emotionally to keep us engaged whilst Stenberg’s central  performance is compelling. As it progresses. however, the accumulation of clichés (most notable in the portrayal of a drug lord, played by Anthony Mackie) cool our enthusiasm as we head for an overly tidy resolution. Some judicious editing of what is an overlong film would have helped considerably in this respect.

As The Hate U Give was a young adult’s novel so it is a young adult's film although given that we don’t have the racial issues and gun violence that is so endemic in the US and with little that transcends this context, the audience for it here, even amongst its comparable demographic, is likely to be limited.

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