On Aug. 9, 2014, an African American 18-year-old, Michael Brown was killed at the hands of Darren Wilson after he robbed a convenience store for cigarettes. Wilson declared that he did it due to self-defense, but there is no evidence to make that statement true.

There have been many protests from peaceful to violent in the past years due to many people who have died by a police officer thinking to fast, and because of the fact that it is rare for the officer to go to trial let alone go to prison.  

According to CNN, only 80 officers had been arrested on murder or manslaughter charges for on-duty shootings. During that 12-year span, 35% were convicted, while the rest were pending or not convicted.

The Hate U Give shows a story of how Starr Carter (Amandla Stenberg) deals with the murder of her lifelong best friend Khalil (Algee Smith) by a white cop, and how she speaks out for him and many other innocent African Americans.

As the movie sets in, you see a younger Starr, her father, mother and her brother Seven sitting at their dining room table.

They are talking about what they have to do in the event they get pulled over and what happens when they are addressed by a cop at any point in their life.

Starr is then seen at a party with her Garden Heights friends. Her friend Kenya goes to get into a fight with some random girl and leaves Starr alone. That’s when you see Khalil for the first time in the movie. Then some random gang member shoots up the party and Starr and Khalil run to his car.

Then, the movie shows the exact moment when Khalil gets shot. What happens is that after they pull out of the side of the road Khalil gets pulled over and then the cop (Drew Starkey) asks for him to pull out his license, but Khalil didn’t want to until he knew why he was pulled over. Then Khalil gets out of the car and then cop 115 goes back to his car, and then Khalil reaches through the window and grabs a hairbrush and then cop 115 shoots him.

The plot was executed in a way that made me not know what was going to happen next. But they knew how to write the story so that we could guess what would happen but not know exactly. They didn’t jump around and they didn’t have any character who wasn’t necessary.

The movie even me cry which is really hard to do. This movie really spoke to me and many others that I have talked to for it shows what really happens around this country to African American communities.

Even though this story technically isn’t a true story, it really is. Things like this sadly happen all over the country every day we see things like this on the news all the time.

This movie may be hard to watch for many and isn’t for the light-hearted due to you see Khalil get shot, but it really is a big eye-opener on how these things happen and how people who are close to them feel during the aftermath.

That was a really hard scene to watch for me and many others due to feeling a lot of different emotions that quickly set in.

Khalil and Starr were lifelong friends and they even both liked each other in more than a friend way. They were each other’s first kiss and Starr’s first crush. The night that Khalil got murdered he had shared his feelings for Starr and said that even though she had a boyfriend (Kj Apa) that he would wait for her.

But, there were some things needed to be addressed sooner such as who was Seven’s mother and father and what he was to Starr? We later found out in the movie, but it was only addressed near the end and pretty briefly. It felt like if you blinked you would miss it.

Furthermore, there really aren’t any movies like this one. This movie is one of a kind and is a big deal to talk about. Even though this movie is a really controversial topic it really sets a point on how we run this country and what we need to to to change it.

The Hate U Give is one of the best movies that doesn’t try sugar coat anything and it tells you how it is. Most movies don’t do things like that because they are afraid of backlash so they try to make you happy in the ending and throughout the movie.