Viha

I feel bad that I wasn't as knocked out by this movie as much as most other viewers, but I must give an honest reaction. 'La Haine' looks at roughly twenty four hours in the lives of three young friends of various ethnic backgrounds who live in the suburbs of Paris. It is the morning after a riot and tensions run high. A buddy of theirs is in hospital after a police beating, and one of them (Vincent Cassel, 'Dobermann') the volatile Viz finds a cops gun. His mates are the more level headed boxer Hubert (Hubert Kounde) and the charming rogue Said (Said Taghmaoui, 'Three Kings'). This is a gritty, depressing and presumably realistic look at France's desperate underclass. The three leads are all very good. Cassel is a major star in France ('The Brotherhood Of The Wolf',etc.) but the real stand out for me is the charismatic Taghmaoui, who after this and a memorable role in 'Three Kings' has the potential to be an international success. 'La Haine's heart is in the right place and the ending is powerful and unexpected, but overall I felt it seemed overly familiar and a bit too shallow. Even so it's a movie worth watching despite having almost unreadable subtitles on the video version I saw. If you want to see another even more disturbing look at racism and hatred in modern day France I highly recommend Gaspar Noe's 'Seul contre tous' ('I Stand Alone') which almost makes this look like a feel-good teen comedy.