La Haine

This film is so good the professor wasted two full lecture sessions to make us watch it. (Ok so its a bit of a mickey mouse class)

1995 Black and white French film by the director Mathieu Kassovitz. The black and white thing really isn't off putting. It features Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé, Saïd Taghmaoui in the leading roles as three teens in the ghetto of Paris. The film came out during a period of social unrest in France, and deals with the social fracture that locational disconnect i.e. the ghetto, has resulted in.

Summary/Spoilers:
Following a riot in the banlieues (outskirt ghettos) of Paris, there is much unrest in the neighborhood. The film centers on one day in the life of three friends, Said, Vinz, and Hubert. Their home boy Abdel is in the hospital from injuries during the riot. Vinz, out to make a name for himself, has picked up a revolver. He swears he's going to kill a policeman (or pig, as they are commonly referred to in the film) if Abdel dies. The three go on epic ghetto adventures throughout the day, including smoking copious amounts of weed, stealing hot dogs, shoplifting, beating people up, getting beat up, and smoking more weed, not necessarily in that order.  Tensions run high between the three as Hubert thinks Vinz's a idiot for packing heat and venerating violence.
Due to a clusterfuck involving a coke fiend and security guards that were more like thugs, our heroes get trapped in the city for the night. Some time during the night Abdel dies, and Vinz makes up his mind to kill 'a pig'. But during a scuffle, with his gun pressed to the face of a skinhead, Vinz's heart of gold shines through and he doesn't pull the trigger. The morning comes and the three make it back to the ghetto. Vinz hands his gun over to Hubert. Just when all is well and everyone's got a smile on their face, a plainclothes police pulls up and starts hassling Vinz with his gun.
At this point its obvious shit's gona go down, because the film's called hatred, not redemption. Sure enough, the douche police's butterfingers slip and BANG, there goes Vinz's face. The film blacks out as a bang is heard, leaving it to the imagination who else died under the gun.


Thoughts:
Everyone in the room (my classmates) all gasped with me at the same time. Since Black Swan came out recently, just when everyone was thinking 'black and white foreign film about prejudice, yawn', Vincent Cassel's face pops up, and people snap wide awake.

This face.

The film's fantastic to begin with, but there are some beautiful cinematic moments as extra toppings.
One is the dolly zoom effect when the trio stands on a pedestrian crossing bridge:


Gave me serious vertigo, especially since it was big screen viewing.

Another is the badass mix by an anonymous DJ in the film sampling Edith Piaf's "Non Je ne Regrette Rien" ringing through the hood. Classmates went bonkers at this one. whisperOMGInceptionwhisper:



A surreal moment where Vinz hallucinates la vache (cow).

An even more surreal scene with a random little man in the restroom.

And its little nuggets like these that propel this film into the 'great' category. The film's gritty but around every corner there is easy humor, showing the intelligence behind the mindless hoodlum image. It conveys its morals without being over the top, Too bad the director went on to make the very unimpressive Gothika.



TL;DR:
An Arab, a black and a Jew was chilling out maxin' relaxin' all cool, and much cussing, drugs, and violence commences. You'll get the message, I promise. Great fucking film. Seriously.

'The world is  y ours'

If you want to watch the whole film, you can try here:

La Haine

No idea if there are subtitles though.