Black Lives Matter Movie Gives Both Sides

As The Hate U Give reached its climax, I had to reach down to the floor. There it was, right down there with the soda residue and the spilled popcorn: My jaw. Did I really just see a Black Lives Matter movie, in which an unarmed black youth is shot and killed by a white cop, build up to a scene in which a black cop explains what goes through the mind of a police officer in such a situation, when a suspect repeatedly disobeys lawful commands, and explains that he would have shot the guy too? This film is going to make Sheriff David Clarke jump out of his seat and cheer.

The Hate U Give looks like the bait-and-switch movie of the year. Even its title gets turned on its ear: “The hate u give little infants,” opined Tupac Shakur, “f***ks everybody.” (The letters form the acronym “thug life.”) Yet the conclusion of the movie’s teen heroine, Starr (a terrific Amandla Stenberg, who has a smile of pure sunshine), amid much discussion of how black people are forced into crime by circumstance, is that the hate we give is the problem. Who are we? Maybe it’s black people. Maybe it’s everyone. “We” have the power to “break the cycle,” Starr urges us to accept, as she and her neighbors cooperate with the police they’ve been protesting, in the process upending a black drug gang.

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Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith is the film critic for the Wall Street Journal.

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As The Hate U Give reached its climax, I had to reach down to the floor. There it was, right down there with the soda residue and the spilled popcorn: My jaw. Did I really just see a Black Lives Matter movie, in which an unarmed black youth is shot and killed by a white cop, build up to a scene in which a black cop explains what goes through the mind of a police officer in such a situation, when a suspect repeatedly disobeys lawful commands, and explains that he would have shot the guy too? This film is going to make Sheriff David Clarke jump out of his seat and cheer.

The Hate U Give looks like the bait-and-switch movie of the year. Even its title gets turned on its ear: “The hate u give little infants,” opined Tupac Shakur, “f***ks everybody.” (The letters form the acronym “thug life.”) Yet the conclusion of the movie’s teen heroine, Starr (a terrific Amandla Stenberg, who has a smile of pure sunshine), amid much discussion of how black people are forced into crime by circumstance, is that the hate we give is the problem. Who are we? Maybe it’s black people. Maybe it’s everyone. “We” have the power to “break the cycle,” Starr urges us to accept, as she and her neighbors cooperate with the police they’ve been protesting, in the process upending a black drug gang.