Review of La Haine (1995) by Jay K — 04 Jan 2015

Kassovitz's debut, and his moment of glory is a fantastically shot tale of friendship and violence on the streets of suburban Paris. La Haine inhabits the grim, riot-scarred tenements of Paris' housing projects.

Vinz, Hubert and Said are our guides through this Parisian netherworld. Each is played with fired-eyed intensity, particularly Cassel who windmills through the city with a .44 Magnum and a vendetta against the world, when a friend is beaten into a coma by police.

Mathieu Kassovitz' black and white photography drains what little cheer there is out of the concrete jungle, and gives this gut-punching slice of social realism a power conspicuously missing from his later works like, say, Gothika.

You'd never have guessed he'd go on to make silly Vin Diesel films...