Review by Marty Mapes

Fresh on DVD from the Criterion Collection, La Haine (Hate) takes place over the course of a day. The lives of Vinz, Saïd, and Hubert (Vincent Cassel, Saïd Taghmaoui, and Hubert Koundé), are as boring and aimless as they always are, but gnawing at them from inside is the spark of violence.

There isn't much of a story arc to La Haine; it's more a slice of life. It's no secret that this is a deliberate choice by director Mathieu Kassovitz. The pointlessness of the lives of the characters could make for a boring movie. Indeed, if you have no patience for character studies and slice-of-life films, La Haine is not for you. But it has a lot going for it besides the plot. In addition to the excellent acting and inspired cinematography, its release was a groundbreaking moment in French film history.

Twelve years later, La Haine lives on in the French psyche. Most recently, it seems prescient of the 2005 riots that took place outside of Paris. In truth, there have been many problems between police and banlieu dwellers in France, for decades. La Haine could have been made any time after about 1980 and it still would have the same resonance today. But it was Kassovitz in 1995 who broke that ground and brought a more American sensibility to French cinema.

The best of the extra features on the two-DVD set, surprisingly, is the one that has the least to do with the film itself. Featuring three sociologists, Social Dynamite is a fascinating history of housing projects. The three talking heads discuss not only the housing projects in France, but also Chicago and elsewhere in the world. High-rise housing projects were a good idea at one point. But the followup economic investment never came, and so the projects became places of isolation, boredom, and little opportunity.

This Criterion release is a great excuse to watch La Haine again.

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