La Haine

La Haine (French pronunciation: [la ɛn], lit. 'Hatred'; released in the United States as Hate) is a 1995 French social thriller film written, co-edited, and directed by Mathieu Kassovitz. 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. The title derives from a line spoken by one of them, Hubert: "La haine attire la haine!", "hatred breeds hatred". Kassovitz was awarded the Best Director prize at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.
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 riots escalate, leading to a siege of the local police station and the loss of a police officer's revolver. The film follows the lives of three friends of Abdel, who are all young men from immigrant families, over approximately twenty consecutive hours.
Vinz, a young Jewish man with an aggressive temperament, seeks revenge for Abdel's condition. He harbors a deep hatred for all police officers and secretly emulates Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver in front of his bathroom mirror. Hubert, an Afro-French boxer and small-time drug dealer, aspires to escape the banlieue and create a better life for himself. However, his boxing gymnasium was destroyed in the riots. Saïd, a young North African Muslim, acts as a mediator between Vinz and Hubert who constantly argue.
The three friends lead a directionless daily routine and frequently find themselves under police surveillance. At a rooftop party which is broken up by the police, Vinz insults a plainclothes police officer. After the trio leaves, Vinz reveals that he has discovered the .44 Magnum revolver lost during the riot. He plans to use it to kill a police officer if Abdel dies. While Hubert disapproves, Vinz secretly takes the gun with him. They try to visit Abdel in the hospital but are stopped by the police. Saïd is arrested after they aggressively refuse to leave, but he is later released with the assistance of a police officer who knows his brother.
A disagreement arises between Vinz and Hubert regarding their perspectives on policing and violence, leading them to part ways temporarily. Saïd accompanies Vinz, while Hubert briefly returns home. 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 triggers a confrontation with the police, and the group narrowly escapes after Vinz almost shoots a riot officer. They board a train to Paris, where their interactions with both friendly and hostile Parisians escalate several situations into dangerous confrontations.
In a public restroom, they encounter a Polish survivor of the gulag who tells them a story about a man who froze to death after he refused to relieve himself in public near the train and then failed to re-board in time. The trio is perplexed by the meaning of the story.
Later, they visit Astérix, a frequent cocaine user who owes money to Saïd. This visit leads to a violent confrontation, as Astérix appears to force Vinz to play Russian roulette, although the gun is secretly unloaded. They encounter sadistic plainclothes police officers who arrest Saïd and Hubert while Vinz manages to escape. The police officers verbally and physically abuse the duo before imprisoning them until late at night, causing the three friends to miss the last train from Saint-Lazare station and spend the night on the streets.
After being kicked out of an art gallery and failing to hotwire a car, the trio takes shelter in a shopping mall. They hear from a news broadcast that Abdel has died. They make their way to a rooftop, where they insult skinheads. However, they encounter the same group of skinheads who mercilessly attack Saïd and Hubert. Vinz intervenes, holding one of the skinheads at gunpoint. Despite Hubert pushing Vinz to execute him, Vinz hesitates and ultimately lets the skinhead go.
In the early morning, the trio returns home, and Vinz hands the gun over to Hubert. Vinz and Saïd encounter the officer whom Vinz had insulted at the rooftop party. The officer seizes Vinz, threatening him with a loaded gun against his head. Hubert rushes to their aid, but the officer accidentally discharges his gun, killing Vinz. A tense standoff ensues between Hubert and the officer, as Saïd closes his eyes. A single gunshot is heard, leaving it unclear who fired the shot or who may have been struck.
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.
Kassovitz has said that the idea came to him when a young Zairian, Makomé M'Bowolé, was shot in 1993. He was killed at point blank range while in police custody and handcuffed to a radiator. The officer was reported to have been angered by M'Bowolé's words, and had been threatening him when the gun went off accidentally. Kassovitz began writing the script on 6 April 1993, the day M'Bowolé was shot. 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. Oussekine's death is also referred to in the opening montage of the film. Mathieu Kassovitz included his own experiences; he took part in riots, he acts in a number of scenes and includes his father Peter in another.
The majority of the filming was done in the Parisian suburb of Chanteloup-les-Vignes. Unstaged footage was used for this film, taken from 1986 to 1995; riots still took place during the time of filming. To actually film in the banlieues, Kassovitz, the production team and the actors, moved there for three months prior to the shooting as well as during actual filming. Due to the film's controversial subject matter, seven or eight local French councils refused to allow the film crew to film on their territory. Kassovitz was forced to temporarily rename the script Droit de Cité. Some of the actors were not professionals and the film includes many situations that were based on real events.
The music of the film was handled by French hardcore rap group Assassin, whose song "Nique la Police" (translated as "Fuck the Police") was featured in one of the scenes of the film. One of the members of Assassin, Mathias "Rockin' Squat" Crochon, is the brother of Vincent Cassel, who plays Vinz in the film.
The film is dedicated to those who died while it was being made.
Upon its release, La Haine received widespread critical acclaim and was well received in France and abroad. The film was shown at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival where it enjoyed a standing ovation. Kassovitz was awarded the Best Director prize at the festival. The film opened at number one at the French box office with a gross of 12.5 million Francs for the week. It was number one for four consecutive weeks. The film had a total of 2,042,070 admissions in France where it was the 14th highest-grossing film of the year.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 96% based on 69 reviews, with an average rating of 8/10. 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." Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called the film "raw, vital and captivating". Wendy Ide of The Times stated that La Haine is "[o]ne of the most blisteringly effective pieces of urban cinema ever made."
After the film was well received upon its release in France, Alain Juppé, who was Prime Minister of France at the time, commissioned a special screening of the film for the cabinet, which ministers were required to attend. 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."
It was ranked number 32 in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010.
La Haine was available on VHS in the United States, but was not released on DVD until The Criterion Collection released a two-disc edition in 2007. Both HD DVD and Blu-ray versions have also been released in Europe, and Criterion released the film on Blu-ray in May 2012. 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.
La Haine was also released in 4K Blu-ray format by Criterion on 2 April 2024.