Hass

Reminiscent of Costas-Gavras' film Z with its rapid-fire dialogue and staccato rhythms, La Haine (Hate) directed by 28 year-old Mathieu Kassovitz, is a passionate look at racial tensions at a Paris housing project. Although drug dealing, urban decay, and police brutality have been shown in films before, rarely have they had the sense of vitality and urgency shown in La Haine.

Three friends from different ethnic backgrounds live in the Bluebell housing projects on the outskirts of Paris. This is not the Paris of travel brochures or films like Amelie, but a desolate urban landscape, harsh and grim with housing projects that look as if they could be in any big city in the world. Vinz (Vincent Cassel), is a working class Jew; Hubert (Hubert Kounde), the most intelligent and self-reflective of the three, is an African boxer; and Said (Said Taghmaoui), an Arab from North Africa is younger but just as embittered.

The film depicts their rage against the police whom they see as oppressors. Marginalized economically and politically, without jobs, parents who care, or hope for the future, the streets are their home and they are open targets for police who are shown as brutal and racist. In one startling scene, a veteran cop taunts and physically abuses Said and Hubert while training a rookie cop. The rookie can only look on and shake his head in disbelief.

Shot in black and white, La Haine shows a single day in the lives of the three friends. Following a major riot in which a local teenager, Abdel, is critically wounded by the police, Vinz, the most volatile of the group, vows that if Abdel dies he will kill a cop to get even. Hubert wants to restrain him, and Said doesn't seem to care either way, as long as he can get his money from a drug dealer named Snoopy. When Vinz finds a Smith & Wesson 44 lost by the police during the riots, the spiral of violence escalates and builds toward a memorable conclusion.

La Haine does not offer any solutions to social problems but clearly shows the anger and frustration of people who feel trapped by their circumstances. In its depiction of a society in free-fall, it also has immediacy. Three weeks after the film was released, riots broke out in the Brixton section of London, following the death of a young black man in police custody. Though it is a wake-up call for action on society's growing gap between rich and poor, La Haine makes a powerful statement that violence does not solve anything and that hate begets hate. Someone should pass the word to a few of the world leaders.

Moviemakers when filming French based films have traditionally tended to sentimentalise the ‘people' through the celebration of les petits gens, the little people of Pagnol and Clair as well as more recently the fantastical Parisian wonderland environments of Amelie and Moulin Rouge. With La Haine, young director Mathieu Kassovitz took the flipside of this and gave an illustration of the awfulness of life in the depressed blue-collar areas of Paris

La Haine (‘Hate') begins after a night of rioting on a dismal housing estate on the northern outskirts of Paris and focuses on 24 hours in the lives of three close friends aged around 20. They are Vince (Vincent Cassel), an explosive working-class Jew, Hubert (Hubert Kounde), a handsome, soft-spoken black, and Said (Said Taghmaoui), a mercurial streetwise Arab. With little hopes or prospect of regular employment due to where they come from, the trio drift aimlessly, engaging in petty theft, and seething with aggressive resentment against an uncaring world. L'Avenir c'est nous (We Are the Future) is the ironic slogan on the estate's playground, but this is a film about people who believe they have no future.

The quality of the performances from the 3 main actors, their conviction, the way they interact with one another and the vigour and fluency of Kassovitz's script and direction make this a very special movie indeed. Its full of action, detail, unexpected incidents and quirky humour. For instance, the boys have a bizarre encounter in a public lavatory in central Paris with a diminutive survivor of the Gulag that is as puzzling to them as it is to us. Does the story the Gulag survivor tells them have a deeper meaning than on the surface? Of course it does, and importantly this film makes you think as to what the metaphor means. Throughout violence is always on the point of erupting. There are constant confrontations with a brutal, racist police force, and Vince has a 44 Magnum revolver that a plainclothes cop lost during the riots, which we know will eventually be used on someone. However none of this ever descends into mere gratuitous violence like so many Hollywood films

La Haine presents a state of affairs of the alienation faced by many young people in the ‘projects' in France, and all over the world. It doesn't offer any solutions, though the point is forcibly made that in France, as elsewhere, parts of the police force are part of the problem rather than the solution. Of course, much of what we are shown is familiar to us from British and American films .

The strength of the film is that it neither glamorises nor patronises its characters. They hate their life because it's boring, and they despise the society that's created it for them, together with parks, football fields and a few mod cons with which to comfort them. In particular, they hate the police, who hate them right back. The film's other major achievement is to show in a tangible and very expressive way how a cycle of distrust and anger is created on both sides of this awful divide, so that there is very little anyone can do about it. In other words violence and hate breeds more violence and hate.

A criticism that could be levelled is that in the US / UK versions the sub-titles don't help, pushing what is very authentic dialogue into something more like cliché, as well as pointless miss-translations that occur. However this is just a minor thing, and does not and should not reflect at all on the film itself.

This certainly is one of the greatest films of the 1990s. Its one of those rare films that you will think about for the days and weeks after – not solely about the film itself, but on wider issues such as society, poverty and racism.

I first saw this film in 1997, after seeing and reading reviews about it on tv and the net for a couple of years. I never thought a film could actually make you truly think about things around our world, not just how bad it can be in places like the projects set in the film. I could truly see this happening where I am from(Rochdale,Manchester,UK).

The situation set in the film is a dark and nasty one. you watch 3 friends fall apart from the aftermath of a riot in a parisian project.a friend is near-fatally injured in police custody, which sparks a chain of events, part forced onto the 3 friends, part of self-inflicted.

the acting is amazing. Vincent Cassel's performance is electrifying. his mentality is distorted with hate(hence the film name), but you truly feel he is not a bad seed. His problem is he can't see the wood for the trees, which Hubert tries to point out to him.

Hubert is a character who has the potential to better his life, but he is trapped in his parisian project cell. he tries to guide vinz to a healthier and more productive way of thinking about life.

said seems to be the one who doesn't want trouble, but it is thrust upon him. he sees the relationship between hubert and vinz, his 2 best friend, deteriorate, but doesn't know who to side with, or what to do about it.

Mathieu Kassovitz made this film in a way that you feel for both the police and the the 3 friends. It is amazing to watch, as mathieu takes the simplest things, and makes them look classy(check out the DJ scene for a true example of what I mean). he uses black and white as to colour, and it doesn't look fake, or cheesy. in fact it enhances the film more than you could imagine. you won't sit there and wish he filmed it in colour by the end. the action, although relatively mild compared to todays film, is believable.

speaking about the end, it is one of the most simplest and powerful endings I have seen in a film yet. the soundtrack is awesome too. who would have thought french hip-hop would sound so sweet.

A very suggestive view of an environment abandoned to itself. I loved the fact that all the events happens in a single and normal day, as to highlight the fact that anything insane could happen in any moment. Brilliant execution, stable cinematography and good acting.

I have seen La Haine a handful of times now and with each viewing it just gets better.

The first thing that stands out about the film is the cinematography. It's rare that a film like this is considered both genuine and a good example of it's art but La Haine is both.

The plotline is compelling and realistic and neatly shows the way that inner city life has gone in the big cities in France as well as proving that despite the romance of Paris, it suffers from the same problems as any other major city.

The characters are above all believable and the cast did a great job. The quality of acting is simply stunning from several actors and it would be a shame if it was simply dismissed as "just another foreign art-house movie" by audiences outside France.

Above all the film whilst showing the influences of American films and society has a very clear sense of it's own identity and at no time does it feel like another US Ghetto film transposed to France. This is a major boon to the film and it stands out of the crowd for this, even though many people will dislike it because of this. It is, however, their loss.

It's hard to recommend this film highly enough, but I should add that more than one viewing is required to get the best from La Haine.