The Hate U Give

"The Hate U Give is a film crafted for emotional impact. Amandla Stenberg is striking as 16-year-old Starr, a girl caught between. She lives in Garden Heights, a fictional, predominantly black neighbourhood scavenged by police and local gangs alike. But to Starr, Garden Heights means family; her father’s grocery store is central to the town."

"The Hate U Give succeeds spectacularly. It's anchored by Stenberg's dynamic performance, but the rest of the cast is uniformly terrific."

"Entertaining, enraging, and ultimately deeply moving, "The Hate U Give" is poised to be a hit, and deserves to be."

"The film, directed by George Tillman Jr. and adapted by Audrey Wells, smartly streamlines characters and plots from the book, while inevitably losing some of the neighbourhood colour that made the novel and its characters feel so rich."

"This is mass-market entertainment with a radical bent, a loudspeaker blast of a teen movie."

"Compelling twists and turns keep you on the edge of your seat throughout the more-than-two-hour running time, while the story's tonal gear-changes are not only handled well, but breathtaking in their execution."

"An emotional powerhouse about a police shooting of an unarmed black man. Topped by an incandescent Amandla Stenberg, whose performance grows like a gathering storm, Tillman's film snaps like a livewire. It means to shake you - and does."

"The Hate U Give feels like just that kind of opportunity, and not only that, this is two hours of unforgettable cinematic storytelling which kept me enthralled from the opening few frames until the closing credits."

"A moving, emotionally convincing experience."

"Solidly engineered to engage viewers across racial/economic/political spectrums."

"Put simply, The Hate U Give is one of the best films of the year."