The Hate U Give (Review)
The Hate U Give Might Just Be the Most Important Movie of the Year.
Despite the fact that studies show the amount of onscreen diversity hasn’t improved over 2018, films like The Hate U Give prove that America is starting to get its act together when it comes to opening its eyes to the bitter racism that still has a stranglehold on this country. While other films like Blind Spotting (a personal favorite of 2018), Sorry to Bother You, and BlacKkKlansman have already gotten a chance to speak their peace, The Hate U Give is the first film of the year to deliver that message to a PG-13 audience. While it’s message is noble and the film has a lot of genuinely good qualities about it, the rating makes it feel more than just a little watered down. I’m certainly not going to say that it’s not a good movie, but it didn’t seem to quite live up to my high hopes for it.
The Hate U Give is the same gut-wrenching story we’ve seen all too often in recent years, a young black man is shot down by a cop for no reason other than the color of his skin. This time the story is told from the perspective of the teens best friend Starr (Amandla Stenberg). What should be an open and shut case though is made all the more complicated by the Police watching out for their own and a local drug dealer (Anthony Mackie) who doesn’t want the fact that the boy was selling drugs for him brought to light. There are a lot of cards stacked against Starr trying to prevent her from telling the truth and finding justice for her friend, but that doesn’t stop her from trying to stop this cycle of hate her community finds itself under siege with.
Luckily, I can say that Stenberg gives a much more compelling performance in The Hate U Give than she did in The Darkest Minds, which hit theaters earlier this year. It’s a visceral performance filled with tears and fury that stays with the audience long after the credits have rolled. However, it’s not just a movie about the rage that the black community feels with so many senseless deaths that happen on an almost daily basis. Stenberg embodies this anger but also has to consider that this isn’t just a black and white issue (no pun intended). For one thing, she attends a school that’s made up of majority white students and has a white boyfriend (K.J. Apa). While a lot of these kids are too dumb to realize that while they might not be racist, they definitely have racial preferences. Some even go so far to spout such cringe-worthy lines as, “I don’t see color.” It’s up to Starr to navigate between the two worlds she inhabits and find the fine line. Luckily, Stenberg manages to do just that.
Unluckily, its easy to tell that the script was not placed in the most capable hands. Writer Audry Wells is known for such hot trash as George of the Jungle and The Kid. It’s clear that her understanding of institutionalized racism is on par with a teenager on Tumblr and her take on the story isn’t able to firmly grasp the subtlety necessary to tell this tale. It’s fortunate that the novel the script is based on (by Angie Thomas) is such a powerful story because if it weren’t then The Hate U Give could have been an absolute disaster. Even still, she oversimplified many of the characters motivations and, when it comes to critical moments in the story, she waters them down in an attempt to make them less polarizing. The most notable of which is the shooting at the center of the film, in which the teen proceeds to antagonize the officer and then reaches into his car despite being told not to move. I’m not saying he deserved what happened to him, but I don’t see the purpose of creating shades of gray when they were so obviously unnecessary.
While Audrey Wells won’t get any praise from me, director George Tilman Jr. certainly will. He manages to capture the emotional energy required for a story this epic, which negates the cumbersome script he was given to work with. While there’s certainly a lot of anger at the heart of this film, The Hate U Give isn’t about demonizing Police or white people. Instead, it also looks within the black community at those that prey upon the children and throw gasoline on the fire of hatred that threatens to engulf them every day. His take on this tale is that there is hatred on both sides of the line and both are creating more and more every day. This isn’t in an attempt to let white people or cops off the hook, but it shows that there are a lot of different factors and elements that come together to create the world we live in and solving them is not something that’s going to happen overnight. To me, it’s that combination of emotional intelligence and cultural awareness that manages to make The Hate U Give so good.
Of course, there are problems when it comes to this film, but most of those issues are with the script. Tilman and the actors manage to salvage what could have been a train wreck of a movie. It doesn’t have the biting wit that a lot of other “woke” movies might have had this year, but it manages to deliver a very similar message to a much broader audience. So, if you have kids and don’t want them to be terrible people when they grow up, take them to see The Hate U Give. It’s a really important movie that isn’t perfect, but neither is the world be live in.
