La Haine

‘La Haine’ (‘The Hate’) is a raw and hard movie, which really impressed me when I saw it some 7 years ago, and now on dvd it remains a good film, full of tension. It describes the daily life of the local youth in a multicultural, grim suburb of Paris, dominated by unemployment and crime.

There is a lot of tension in the air, and clashes between the police and the youth gangs are a daily routine. It comes to a boiling point when an Arab boy is criticially wounded in a fight. Vinz, one of his friends, finds a gun that was lost by a policeman, and it is burning in his pocket to take revenge. In the movie you follow Vinz and two friends wandering around the city, provocating the police and getting into trouble.

There really is not much to laugh about, the atmosphere is filled with aggression and tension and everythings points at an unhappy end… Really an impressive harsh film by Kassovitz, with good acting by Vincent Cassel. It is a low-budget movie in black & white, which perfectly suits the character of the film.