'Hatred'; released in the United States as Hate) is a 1995 French social thriller film written, co-edited, and directed by Mathieu Kassovitz.
[2] Starring Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé and Saïd Taghmaoui, the film chronicles a day and night in the lives of three friends from a poor immigrant neighbourhood in the suburbs of Paris.
La Haine opens with a montage of news footage depicting urban riots in a banlieue in the commune of Chanteloup-les-Vignes near Paris.
In the aftermath of the riots, a local man named Abdel Ichaha is gravely injured in police custody and is in intensive care.
The film follows the lives of three friends of Abdel, who are all young men from immigrant families, over approximately twenty consecutive hours.
He harbors a deep hatred for all police officers and secretly emulates Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver in front of his bathroom mirror.
They reunite at another gathering in the banlieue, which quickly descends into chaos when Abdel's brother attempts to murder a police officer as an act of revenge.
This visit leads to a violent confrontation, as Astérix appears to force Vinz to play Russian roulette, although the gun is secretly unloaded.
This climactic standoff is accompanied by a voice-over of Hubert's slightly modified opening lines ("It's about a society in free fall...") and the recurring phrase jusqu'ici tout va bien ("so far so good").
The film portrays a microcosm of French society's descent from hostility into senseless violence, emphasizing that despite appearances, all is not well and the future remains uncertain.
He was also inspired by the case of Malik Oussekine, a 22-year-old student protester who died after being badly beaten by the riot police after a mass demonstration in 1986, in which he did not take part.
One of the members of Assassin, Mathias "Rockin' Squat" Crochon, is the brother of Vincent Cassel, who plays Vinz in the film.
The website's critics consensus reads, "Hard-hitting and breathtakingly effective, La Haine takes an uncompromising look at long-festering social and economic divisions affecting 1990s Paris.
[10] Wendy Ide of The Times stated that La Haine is "[o]ne of the most blisteringly effective pieces of urban cinema ever made.
A spokesman for the Prime Minister said that, despite resenting some of the anti-police themes present in the film, Juppé found La Haine to be "a beautiful work of cinematographic art that can make us more aware of certain realities.
The release includes audio commentary by Kassovitz, an introduction by actress Jodie Foster, "Ten Years of La Haine", a documentary that brings together cast and crew a decade after the film's landmark release, a featurette on the film's banlieue setting, production footage, and deleted and extended scenes, each with an afterword by Kassovitz.