Review of La Haine (1995) by Ricardo Z — 03 Sep 2008

Since his hard-hitting debut, Mathieu Kassovitz seems to have become caught up in Hollywood and Hollywood-style action adventure projects, entirely unlike his debut. However, this entrance, La Haine, is an intense time-tabled portrait of three very identifiably characterized young friends in an impoverished multi-ethnic housing project in the aftermath of a great riot. Exceedingly powerful French flamethrower Vincent Cassel, who plays a Jew, is filled with rage. He sees himself as a gangster ready to win street cred by killing a cop, and molds himself after De Niro in Taxi Driver. Saïd Taghmaoui is a cheery and chatty Arab who attempts to work as peacemaker and tries to find a balance between his two friends' reaction to the world around them. Hubert Koundé is a black boxer and drug dealer. Most quiet and sensitive of the three, he sorrowfully contemplates the ghetto and the surrounding spawn of hate, wanting just to escape the degenerate atmosphere of brutality and hatred but lacks the resources. The three actors play characters who share their first names, which is an interesting touch because it is a quick and easy way for them to familiarize each other to the extent of being tightly bonded friends, as they address each other reflexively even in front of the camera. A friend of theirs has been brutalized by the police after a riot and lies in a coma. Vincent finds a cop's gun lost in the riot. He vows that if their friend dies from his injuries, he will use it to kill a cop.

This sets off events that take the three down a foreboding and fatalistic path of destruction. Kassovitz plunges into his intentions by creating an innately realistic and unabashedly gritty capsule. Aside from being shot in stark black and white, which is almost reminiscent of Louis Malle's Elevator to the Gallows, his script does not work like conventional clockwork. The characters do not follow the story, but vice versa. After an intense chapter of the movie in which the three are profiled by police in central Paris, where they are clearly distinguishable as fish out of water, the film slows to their speed as they wander, sit and brood.

As an American, I think La Haine is of significant cultural importance because just as foreigners see American films and develop the impression that we are all rich and surrounded by scenic and urban gloss and beauty, Americans see other cultures in the same misunderstood light, one of these cultures being French. This film distinguishes a substantial pocket of France that shares with the United States the racial unrest, white privilege, minority discrimination and profiling, and socially burdened rage instilled generationally and traditionally.