What does it take to make it out of Crown Heights’ Albany Housing Projects? “It’s only a block, it’s only a street” — and yet by the conclusion of this scrappy documentary about 26-year-old aspiring hip-hop musician Half-a-Mill, a handful of its key subjects will be dead. Director Maggie Hadleigh-West coaxes shockingly candid admissions from Half and his crew, the Godfia Criminals, all childhood friends: “I might have shot someone, one time,” Half says casually, chronicling his younger years as a stickup artist.
“Player Hating: A Love Story” sidesteps any handwringing or moral pronouncements about the gun- and drug-saturated “thug life,” instead presenting an intimate portrait of this tight-knit group that speaks for itself (though the footage, deliberately or not, is sometimes so unpolished it can be hard to follow). It’s a sobering slice of life that puts actual faces to local violent crime statistics.