Cast: Amandla Stenberg, Regina Hall, Russell Hornsby, K.J.

Apa and Anthony Mackie

Director: George Tillman Jr

Starr Carter is consistently shifting between two worlds: the poor, majorly black, neighbourhood
where she lives and the rich, mostly white, prep school she attends. The uneasy balance
between these worlds is shattered once Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best
friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Now, facing pressures from all sides of the
community, Starr needs to find her voice and stand up for what's right.

The movie has been adapted by the 2017 YA bestseller by Angie Thomas. The director is
George Tillman Jr, who made Notorious in 2009, and the title itself is taken from Tupac’s
Thuglife, an acronym for The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everyone. By the end of the
movie, Starr suggests a radical change in attitude, and in fact a change to the third word of this
title – the “U”. Starr is effectively living a double life. Her dad is a proud Black Panther who lives
in a tough black neighbourhood, but he has now settled down to running a neighbourhood store
profitable enough for him to send his daughter to a posh private school, away from bad
influences. It is here that Starr has learned how to pass for white culturally: hardworking, nice
Starr hangs out with the Insta princesses who appear to accept her with no reservations, and
she has a really nice white boyfriend. But she is always careful to suppress any threateningly
“black” mannerisms, yet when she goes to parties in her own home turf, she has to avoid any
“white” phrases.
It is at one of these that she runs into Khalil (Algee Smith), a boy she once knew when they
were both kids, playing at Harry Potter – books of which her father semi-seriously disapproves
because the Hogwarts house system encourages gang culture. Now Khalil is a tough-looking,
handsome young man with expensive clothes, who appears to be still more than a little in love
with Starr, and she is charmed by him. But then there are gunshots and they have to escape the
party in Khalil’s car – and stroppy, headstrong Khalil is pulled over by a jumpy young cop. It
ends in catastrophic violence, and Starr finds that she has to testify under oath in front of a
grand jury, meaning that she, Khalil and her whole community will be on trial. The crisis of
loyalty means her whole “white/black” identity goes to pieces, along with friendship with people
who “don’t see race”.Interestingly, the phrase #blacklivesmatter is used in this movie by the
white characters: the white school students who stage what Starr finds to be a well-meaning but
jarringly inauthentic campus protest. This is a fashionable gesture in which they indulge before
they realise that Starr, their own fellow student, is in fact involved. Meanwhile, the situation is
still more complex: the gangbangers who are acquainted with her father don’t want her to go
public with her testimony in case it puts their criminality in the limelight. The film shows that they
are themselves policing the situation with maximum brutality.It is muscular and very watchable
film, with a really strong starring performance from Stenberg. Perhaps it is flawed by a certain
emotional grandstanding, and the fact that experiences of other black students at her expensive
school (including her own brother) are passed over, and Starr is to all intents and purposes
utterly alone in how she feels. Yet this may be a just approximation of how this is in real life. The
Hate U Give has a fierce storytelling grip.