Cutting through the saccharine feelgood-y-ness of much recent Hollywood teen fare, The Hate U Give is a jolt to the system.

It's a slick, big budget teen film about the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager, that holds front and centre the notion that, as citizens, we have responsibilities that extend beyond our individual needs.

Charged with pure, enlivening rage, it fizzes and pops long after the credits roll.



Directed by George Tillman Jr (behind both the compelling Cuba Gooding Jr vehicle, Men of Honour, and the ridiculous Nicholas Sparks adaptation The Longest Ride), the film is adapted from the bestselling YA novel by 31-year-old Mississippi-based author Angie Thomas, who was inspired to write it after the real-life shooting of 22-year-old Oscar Grant by police in Oakland, California, in 2009.



And while the resulting film speaks clearly about America's racial divisions, its core themes are relevant to teenagers everywhere: What does it mean to be a friend? How will we contribute to building a just society? And what actions can we take toward dismantling white supremacy?

As the film begins, Maverick (Russell Hornsby) instructs his three young children on how to behave in a stop and frisk. Given the fraught politics of conversations around race, it's refreshingly direct and sets the tone for what is to come: this film will voice things that aren't often spoken in studio pictures.



Starr Carter (played by Amandla Stenberg, in an utterly captivating performance) lives in the lower class, predominantly black neighbourhood of Garden Heights but attends school in the wealthy white neighbourhood of Williamson.



Necessarily, she adopts different personas in each place, partying with Kenya (Dominique Fishback) on the weekends and playing video games at school friend Hailey's (Sabrina Carpenter) upscale home during the week.



She's dating the sweet but kind of clueless Chris (KJ Apa), whose naive love of black pop culture she tolerates while keeping the realities of her neighbourhood out of sight.

Algee Smith (right) plays Khalil, childhood best friend to Stenberg's Starr (left). ( Supplied: 20th Century Fox )

When her childhood friend Khalil (Algee Smith) is shot and killed by a police officer in a random traffic stop, these divisions become impossible to maintain. As the only witness to the crime, Starr must make a choice — stay silent, or use her ability to speak in white spaces to articulate the experience of her black neighbourhood, and stand up for her friend.



Words hold power. We know this, and yet rarely are we careful with them. After Khalil's death, the media props up the country's white bias, running stories focusing on Garden Heights' drug problems and puff pieces designed to elicit pity for the cop.

Cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr says police dashcam and bodycam cameras were used to create a sense of urgency and realism. ( Supplied: 20th Century Fox )

"Why do they have to put Mrs Harris on TV like that?" Starr's half-brother Seven comments when he sees Khalil's drug-addicted mother ranting on the news.



It's a rhetorical question (the film's biggest flaw is its tendency to be a bit too heavy-handed in its dialogue, but it's forgivable given the courage of its message). And when Starr agrees to go on a current affairs show, she is asked whether Khalil was dealing — rather than about the shooting.



At Williamson, words become untrustworthy as the divisions of privilege begin to show.



When Starr's involvement in the shooting incident is revealed, Hailey's lack of social awareness is suddenly visible. "He was a drug dealer", she says of Khalil, "He would've died anyway."

Megan Lawless (left) and Sabrina Carpenter (right) play Starr's prep school best friends Maya and Hailey. ( Supplied: 20th Century Fox )

And as her friendship with Starr deteriorates, Hailey unleashes a string of microaggressions that reveal the power imbalance between the two, and the effect that weaponised white fragility has on so many white/ black friendships.



Maya, Starr's other Williamson friend (played by Megan Lawless who is Chinese-American) has to find her own voice in this complex dynamic. She wavers and tries to avoid taking sides, but in the final scenes we see her sitting with Starr and Chris in the lunchroom, while Hailey sits with a new set of blonde friends.



Russell Hornsby and Regina Hall (left) play Starr's parents and Common (right) plays her police officer uncle, Carlos. ( Supplied: 20th Century Fox )

In fiction, as in life, there is no justice for Khalil, and what the film provides in the way of resolution is unsatisfying enough to make sure you leave the cinema feeling rightly unsettled.

The climax is amped to an unnecessarily high level, but the mayhem remains a better choice than a false Hollywood ending where Khalil's death was somehow avenged.

This is an important film. And if, like Hailey, you don't feel all that close to the world depicted, remember: the institutional racism and deeply ingrained white supremacy that perpetuates gun violence, that ghettoises suburbs, that frames its media coverage of black people in a way that dehumanises them, and that urges us over and over to divide rather than unite, concerns us all.

The Hate U Give is in cinemas from January 31.

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