“The Hate U Give,” a popular young adult novel by Angie Thomas, is adapted with deft skill by Audrey Wells, a prolific and deeply humane screenwriter and filmmaker who died last week from cancer, and lovingly directed by George Tillman Jr. It’s love that permeates every corner of this very prescient and effective drama that should be seen by moviegoers of all ages.
Starr Carter leads what she describes as a double life. Her home is in Garden Heights, a poor, predominantly black neighborhood that her father, Maverick (Russell Hornsby) loves and feels attached to. Her prep school, Williamson, is wealthy and predominantly white and something that her mother, Lisa (Regina Hall), deems necessary. And she navigates these two versions of herself with self-prescribed decorum for both.
“Williamson Starr doesn’t give anyone a reason to call her ghetto,” she says. “And I hate myself for doing it.”
She keeps her white boyfriend Chris (K.J. Apa), and friends (Sabrina Carpenter and Megan Lawless) at a distance from her home life, which she manages pretty well until the night when she witnesses her childhood best friend, Khalil (Algee Smith), get shot by a white police officer at a traffic stop.
It’s a scene made only more devastating by how sweet everything is right before it happens. Starr and Khalil run into each other at a party that gets broken up and he offers to drive her home. He’s a little changed, sporting some fancy new clothes and shoes, as he’s started working for a local drug lord, King (Anthony Mackie), to help support his family and pricey medical bills. The two high schoolers talk about music, and flirt and Khalil leans in to kiss Starr. On its own, this sequence is straight out of the best high school rom-coms, before it turns into a horror film.
For as naturalistic and real as “The Hate U Give” is, it goes off the rails just a little bit at the climax to make its grand point about the effect of this kind of climate on innocents, but there is too much heart here to really nitpick at a little hyperbole.
If there is any justice in Hollywood, this is the type of film that should make Stenberg a movie star who has her pick of projects. She’s the type of actress who can even make a role in a bad film sing. And in a very good one like “The Hate U Give”? She’s just magic.
“The Hate U Give,” a 20th Century Fox release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for “mature thematic elements, some violent content, drug material and language.” Running time: 132 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.
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MPAA Definition of PG-13: Parents Strongly Cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.
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Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr
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