Throughout violence is always on the point of erupting. Does the story the Gulag survivor tells them have a deeper meaning than on the surface? Of course it does, and importantly this film makes you think as to what the metaphor means. For instance, the boys have a bizarre encounter in a public lavatory in central Paris with a diminutive survivor of the Gulag that is as puzzling to them as it is to us. Its full of action, detail, unexpected incidents and quirky humour. The quality of the performances from the 3 main actors, their conviction, the way they interact with one another and the vigour and fluency of Kassovitz's script and direction make this a very special movie indeed. L'Avenir c'est nous (We Are the Future) is the ironic slogan on the estate's playground, but this is a film about people who believe they have no future. With little hopes or prospect of regular employment due to where they come from, the trio drift aimlessly, engaging in petty theft, and seething with aggressive resentment against an uncaring world. They are Vince (Vincent Cassel), an explosive working-class Jew, Hubert (Hubert Kounde), a handsome, soft-spoken black, and Said (Said Taghmaoui), a mercurial streetwise Arab.

With La Haine, young director Mathieu Kassovitz took the flipside of this and gave an illustration of the awfulness of life in the depressed blue-collar areas of Paris La Haine (Hate') begins after a night of rioting on a dismal housing estate on the northern outskirts of Paris and focuses on 24 hours in the lives of three close friends aged around 20. Moviemakers when filming French based films have traditionally tended to sentimentalise the people' through the celebration of les petits gens, the little people of Pagnol and Clair as well as more recently the fantastical Parisian wonderland environments of Amelie and Moulin Rouge.

La haine watch online english subtitles