T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E.-The Hate U Give Movie Review
Based on the best-selling young adult novel by Angie Thomas, the film The Hate U Give, directed by George Tillman Jr., tackles the serious issues of racism and police violence with unflinching honesty. An amazing lead performance is shown by Amanda Stenberg. who plays the main character, a young teenage girl, named Starr Carter. Starr is stuck between two totally different worlds. She lives in a predominantly black but violent neighborhood called Garden Heights, where she resides with her family but, attends school at the predominantly white Willamson School where she decodes her look and behavior to try to fit in. The beginning of the movie opens with Starr’s recollection of “the talk” that her father, Maverick, played by Russell Hornsby, gave her and her two siblings — about how to behave if stopped by a police officer, in order not to give the officer an excuse to shoot them. This is a powerful message sent to the audience to know the surface of an issue that is exhibited later on.
In the film, Starr goes to a party with black friends in her neighborhood; when shots ring out, one of them, a young man named Khalil (Algee Smith), a lifelong friend, brings her to safety and drives her home. But during a routine traffic stop — ostensibly for a failure to signal a lane change — he reaches for his hairbrush, which the officer claims to believe is a gun, and shoots Khalil dead. Starr was the only witness to the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. This film is not about police violence rather the people who have to live with police violence. This plays into how Starr has to face pressure from all sides of the black community trying to get justice for Kalil. She struggled throughout the process of mourning Kalil but also trying to find the courage to stand up and speak her truth on behalf of him. Starr chooses to become an advocate for her childhood friend and joins the community in standing up for what she believes in and showing her stance on Black Lives Matter.
The title of the film is borrowed from the Late Tupac Shakur who used his mantra “T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E” and broke it down to an acronym-” The Hate U Give Little Infants F**** Everybody.” The phrase, like the film, unambiguously asserts that racist practices and attitudes, whether official or merely habitual, are the underlying engine of the movie’s very action. This mantra digs into the racial injustices suppressed onto the black society. This film tackles racism as a reality and not a history lesson. Racism hurts us all. The Hate U Give examines the race relations in the United States today which can be powerfully affirming. It can also be incredibly uncomfortable. Regardless, it is an experience that forces you to be present and self-aware in a way that doesn’t happen when the characters look like pictures in a history book. This film speaks out about racial injustices along with the importance of family and uniting communities as many come to find their voice. Every element of the story is handled with sensitivity, respect, and deep humanity, from the specifics of Starr’s relationships to the big themes of how we interact with the world and how we work for change. This is a rare film that does justice to the characters and the themes as it reminds us that we can all do more to bring justice to the world.
