The Hate U Give | Film Review

Hey Guys x

This is a film that I had really been looking forward to. I read the book months in advance and completely loved it. If you want to read my review of the book, click HERE!

But just like the book, this film is about a girl called Starr Carter (Amandla Stenberg). Starr lives as two different people - 'Williamson' Starr when she's at her practically all-white school, 'Garden Heights' Starr when she's at home, in her own neighbourhood. But one night, Starr witnesses her unarmed childhood best friend being shot dead by a police officer, and everything changes. When the opportunity comes to speak out, Starr is deterred from both sides. But can she decide which Starr she wants to be, and whether she wants to speak for her friend, and her community, before it's too late?

One thing that this film did extremely well were the poignant speeches. Particularly towards the end of the film, there were small moments of magic, where the audience were hanging on to every word that was spoken on the screen. Everything that was being said was so relevant and important, and the way that these scenes were shot made you as an audience member feel like you were directly involved in every single thing that was happening. You find yourself wanting to use your own voice, to make yourself heard. This is extremely important for a film of this subject, and makes it clear that this will be a film that is talked about for a long time.

Another thing that the film did exceptionally well was the interactions between characters. In particular, every conversation between Maverick (Russell Hornsby) and King (Anthony Mackie) was completely amazing. Those are the two characters that you really believe. Even when they're not saying anything and you just see the expressions on their faces, they are so believable. The two standouts of the entire film, in my opinion.

However, there were some things about the film that were not as believable as this. A lot of the time when you read a book, the dialogue makes sense, where it wouldn't necessarily if spoken aloud. This film suffers from this problem, due to the fact that complete sentences and phrases were taken from the book that, when spoken aloud, made certain parts seem cheesy and unrealistic - especially when any of the characters, black or white, tried to speak 'hood'. In addition to this, the moments of the film when Starr is speaking as a voice-over also suffer from feeling inauthentic. It was necessary in terms of the information given that the audience needed, but it sounded wooden.

The main thing that changed between the book and the film were the characters that, in the book, were a grey area. Many of the characters in the book (Chris, Uncle Carlos, Maya etc.) became two dimensional, either falling to one side or the other. This particularly struck me about the character of Chris, Starr's boyfriend. In my review of the book, I said that his character was the example of a perfect ally for people of colour, because he was. But in the film, his character was very underused, and the parts that he was used for weren't particularly important in the film. I don't know if this is because of the re-shoots surrounding that particular character (because they changed the actor last minute), but they could have done a lot more with him.

Overall, while I would say that everyone should see this film, I wasn't nearly as pleased with it as I wanted to be. I don't usually do star ratings, but since her name is Starr, I think it makes sense. So I'd give the film 7/10 Starr's!

Lou