Critics reviews

The effervescent energy of this film keeps foaming away under everything... La Haine is an unmissable response to an unending emergency.

As is so often the case with the greatest films, La Haine only seems to get even better with each passing year... The Molotov cocktail landing on planet Earth in La Haine still resonates as a symbolic provocation that the only way to create lasting positive change is to wipe out what has gone before and start again from scratch. And what can be more rebellious that that?

Mathieu Kassovitz’s account of police brutality is as ferocious a punch in the stomach as it was twenty-five years ago, and retains every spark of an explosive deconstruction of France’s treatment of minorities and widening social inequality.

[The film's] raw and righteous exploration of class conflict, racial discrimination and police brutality remains gut-churningly relevant today.

Twenty-five years on, the film is a fresh and seething indictment on poverty, race, media sensationalism, and institutionalised racism... La Haine remains a landmark of modern cinema and, hopefully, its message lands into the hands of a new generation trying to shake off the oppression of those currently in power and out of control.

The film is not subjective to its time period nor its social and political situation, but universal in its context... The premise is timeless and borderless because it gives a voice to those who are silenced when they desperately need to be heard.

Not only does it still carry cultural significance, but the film continues to awe with its striking black and white long takes, and bold encapsulation of what living in the public housing projects is like for people growing up in them... Kassovitz was able to make an important film, with both political and technical merits that stand side by side with outstanding performances by Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé, and Saïd Taghmaoui.

La haine speaks of France but succeeds in transcending the national borders. This visionary film elicits passion and provokes thought, and is that rare combination: a cult movie that is also a classic film.

La Haine contains a few false notes, but they go hand-in-hand with the young punk energy and anger that animates nearly every shot... [The film] builds to a shocking (and deeply contrived) finale, but it's mostly composed of thrillingly unpredictable scenes of the boys hanging out, spitting rapid-fire dialogue loaded with pop-cultural references and chest-thumping braggadocio, and generally getting into trouble..

Stark, exquisite black-and-white photography drains what little cheer there is out of the concrete jungle, creating an alien cityscape devoid of sunshine. But Mathieu Kassovitz's triumph is in finding humanity in every single one of his characters, whether it's the three friends, a sympathetic policeman or an old man they encounter in a restroom.

This is virtuoso, on-the-edge stuff, as exciting as anything we've seen from the States in ages, and more thoroughly engaged with the reality it describes... The politics of the piece are confrontational, to say the least, but there is a maturity and depth to the characterisation which goes beyond mere agitprop: society may be on the point of self-combustion, but this film betrays no appetite for the explosion. A vital, scalding piece of work.

Hate is Kassovitz's Do the Right Thing. Certain aspects of the film are distinctly French but it's amazing how universally recognizable are the cycles of defeat bred by the housing projects and the wanton brinkmanship practiced by disaffected youths. With great passion and intelligence, Kassovitz illustrates the fact that hate is just another dirty, four-letter word.