La Haine

The film opens with a montage of urban riots in the Chanteloup-les-Vignes banlieue following Abdel Ichaha's grave injury in police custody. The unrest escalates to a siege of a local police station, and a police revolver is lost amid the chaos. The incident foreshadows the volatile dynamics that will drive the next twenty hours.

We meet Vinz, Hubert, and Saïd and see their everyday life under police surveillance. Vinz is hot-tempered and harbors resentment toward the police, Hubert dreams of escaping the banlieue, and Saïd acts as a mediator between them. The film follows their lives over roughly twenty hours.

A rooftop party is broken up by plainclothes police. Vinz verbally insults an officer, increasing tension. After the party, Vinz discovers the .44 Magnum lost during the riot and secretly pockets the gun, vowing to use it if Abdel dies. Hubert disapproves of the plan.

The friends try to visit Abdel in the hospital but are stopped by the police. Saïd is arrested after they refuse to leave, though he is released thanks to a sympathetic officer who knows his brother. The incident heightens the sense of looming danger.

Vinz and Hubert argue about policing and violence, prompting a temporary split. Saïd stays with Vinz while Hubert returns home, marking a shift in their dynamic as they each chase different paths through the night. The trio remains loosely connected as they move through the banlieue.

The friends reunite at another gathering, only to witness Abdel's brother attempting to murder a police officer in revenge. A confrontation with the police follows, and Vinz nearly shoots a riot officer, but the trio escapes and heads to Paris aboard a train. The journey exposes them to both hostile and mixed reactions from fellow passengers.

On the train to Paris, their encounters with various Parisians intensify the tension and push them toward dangerous choices. The distance between their dreams and the reality of the city becomes stark as they navigate a culture clash on the move.

In a public restroom, they meet a Polish survivor of the gulag who tells a story about a man who froze to death after refusing to relieve himself in public near the train. The tale mystifies them but lingers as a moral warning about desperation and dignity. The encounter deepens the fragility of their situation.

They visit Astérix, a cocaine addict who owes Saïd money. Tempers rise as Astérix pressures Vinz to play Russian roulette, but the gun is secretly unloaded, dulling the immediate danger and foreshadowing what is to come. The tension hedges on a possible eruption of violence.

Plainclothes officers arrest Saïd and Hubert after Vinz escapes. The officers verbally and physically brutalize the two before jailing them until late at night. The trio ends up missing the last train home from Saint-Lazare station, forcing them to spend the night on the streets.

After failing to hotwire a car and being kicked out of an art gallery, they retreat to a rooftop and then to a shopping mall. They insult a group of passing skinheads and later learn Abdel has died; Vinz vanishes into the crowd, creating a new rift among them.

Hubert and Saïd confront the skinheads they taunted earlier, who now attack them mercilessly. Vinz intervenes, holding a skinhead at gunpoint; Hubert urges him to kill, but Vinz hesitates and allows the man to go free. The moment crystallizes the film's central moral choice about violence.

Early in the morning, the trio returns home with Vinz's gun now in Hubert's possession. They encounter the officer Vinz offended earlier; a loaded gun is aimed, and the officer discharges accidentally, killing Vinz. Hubert and the officer face off in a Mexican standoff as a voiceover frames society's decline; Saïd closes his eyes as a gunshot is heard, and the outcome remains unrevealed.