Rolling Stone
"...Prepare to be jolted by the intensity....The performances are as white hot as the subject matter..." 02/22/1996 p.70USA Today
"...Writer-director Mathieu Kassovitz (Cafe au Lait) mines so much tension and pointed dialogue from a low budget and deceptively simple premise..." -- 3 1/2 out of 4 stars 02/09/1996 p.4D Variety
"...Extremely intelligent....The in-your-face lensing and more formal compositions are used to maximum effect..." 05/29/1995 New York Times
"...[A] precise and troubling film....Smartly aware that many urban problems are also global..." 02/09/1996 p.C21 Los Angeles Times
"...Raw, vital and captivating....HATE is a visceral fable of a divided society heading blindly for a crash-landing..." 03/08/1996 p.F16 Chicago Sun-Times
"...As a filmmaker, Kassovitz has grown since his first film. His black-and-white cinematography camera is alert, filling the frame with meaning his characters are not aware of..." 04/19/1996 p.32 Sight and Sound
"For all the comic byplay, Kassovitz keeps the viewer braced for the simmering tension to boil over." 06/01/2006 p.88-89 ReelViews 9 of 10
If there's one thing that Mathieu Kassovitz's black-and-white feature proves, it's that hate knows no boundaries -- international, racial, or generational. With a perspective that's part Kids, part Boyz 'N the Hood, part Scorsese, and part all its own, Hate offers a raw, powerful look at urban class struggles in and around Paris. If not for the subtitled French dialogue, this story could just as easily have taken place in New York, Los Angeles, London, or dozens of other cities...The film uses a repeated, and somewhat chilling, metaphor comparing life in urban France to someone jumping off a skyscraper. All the way down, with each passing floor, the jumper thinks "So good, so far." Then he hits bottom. In the end, it's not how far you fall that matters, but how you land. Hate may portray young men who explode on impact, but the film itself has a solid touchdown. - James Berardinelli
Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
Mathieu Kassovitz is a 29-year-old French director who in his first two films has probed the wound of alienation among France's young outsiders. His new film "Hate'' tells the story of three young men--an Arab, an African and a Jew--who spend an aimless day in a sterile Paris suburb, as social turmoil swirls around them and they eventually get into a confrontation with the police...The film's ending is more or less predictable and inevitable, but effective all the same. The film is not about its ending. It is not about the landing, but about the fall. "Hate'' is, I suppose, a Generation X film, whatever that means, but more mature and insightful than the American Gen X movies. In America, we cling to the notion that we have choice, and so if our Gen X heroes are alienated from society, it is their choice--it's their "lifestyle.'' In France, Kassovitz says, it is society that has made the choice. - Roger Ebert
|
