Profoundly relevant in today’s racially tense America that is unhinged by police brutality against African Americans that has resurfaced again in media after the 1980, The Hate U Give is a powerful film about present times that conveys its message of social injustice loud and clear. The film also speaks of the hate another generation facing it and its repercussion on the society as a whole.

Adapted from a bestselling Young Adult novel of the same name by Angie Thomas, the title which is inspired from the acronyms coined by the rapper Tupac Shakur, namely “T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E.” and “The hate you gave little infants F*** everybody”.

The Hate U Give centers on Starr (Amandla Stenberg), and is told from her point of view. A young adult of sixteen, Starr recounts the time when her father Maverick (Russell Hornsby) had the “talk” with her and two brothers on how to behave when you have to face the country’s racially-intolerant police force. He also educates them early on racial empowerment messages having them memorise the tenets of Black Panther Party’s “Ten-Point Program”.

Living in a fictional area called Garden Heights, a predominantly poverty-stricken African American area with low income families, negligible work opportunities, gangs, drugs and violence, Starr and her brother had to learn the realities of life and stick by them if they wanted to survive and make something out of themselves in the world.

Their parents Maverick and Lisa (Regina Hall) work hard and send them to private school, to give them better life opportunities. Starr and her brothers live two lives, one is the life they have where they live and the second they have at school.

Starr takes off her hoodie, doesn’t use slang in school or with her school friends, because she does not want to be labelled as “the poor girl from the hood” or “ghetto”. But her worlds collide when she witnesses her childhood friend Khalil (Algee Smith) being shot and killed by a fidgety police officer, who thought that Khalil was pulling out a gun on him, when he was only picking up his hair brush.

Powerful and insightful, The Hate U Give is competently made by George Tillman Jr. (Soul Food, Notorious) and finely acted by the whole cast with Stenberg and Hornsby owning every scene they are in. While the movie is message-based, it does conveniently gloss over the fact on better intermingling of the races, and instead only focuses on one side of the story, mostly deeming anything else incomputable.

A finely constructed movie deeply rooted in real world reality which is powerful even with its corny resolutions and young adult material. •