La Haine

Remarkable how a movie essentially as old as each of us, feels like it could have been created yesterday. It's universality in time and space is powerful as it is tragic. I felt Vinz' rage, understand that that he feels like he has no options left but to prove himself to himself and to the world. He's tired of feeling beaten down and knows he's better than the cards he's been given and wants to beat the game by breaking open the rules. I adored Hubert's wisdom and maturity. He's out to prove he's better than the cards he's been given and wants to win the game despite the odds. But I crashed with him when his desire to get out, move on, and break free was trampled, over and over, until there was nothing left for him to hope for. I empathized with Said's combination of both. Often not knowing which approach to take, wanting to do something, but ultimately not knowing how to start. He actively tries to find it, and occasionally thinks he has, but is always brought back down to reality. He's still trying to figure out what he can do with his cards, and ultimately how the game works too. From a critiquing perspective, my biggest complaint is that some of the individual scenes in the latter parts of the movie where they lashed out at more marginal levels of authority were a bit overdone. So far so good, so far so good, but it's not how you land, it's how you fall.