It rings throughout Mathieu Kassovitz's film: Fuck the police. Kassovitz hates the police and his film makes no bones about it. It starts with extensive credits over footage of violent riots on a Paris housing estate, sparked by the police beating of local youth. In the (precisely timed) 24 hours that follow, three friends - Vinz (Vincent Cassell), Hubert (Hubert Kounde) and Said (Said Taghmaoui) - move through the ennui and tension of the estate with its heavy police presence and burned-out cars. They travel into Paris to collect money owed to Said by a dealer called Asterix and tangle with both police and FN skinheads. All the while Vinz carries the missing police revolver he found during the previous evening's violence.

La Haine (Hate) represented France at Cannes last year, where Kassovitz fittingly took best director. In its native land the film is incendiary - praised by critics; damned by the Right - and labelled as a European Boyz N The Hood. Kassovitz's picture deserves better. This is nowhere near as politically nor cinematically naive as the over-praised Singleton feature. Heir to Scorsese and Lee (particularly Do The Right Thing) it certainly is, but it's also the best and least patronising of Ken Loach as much as it's Mean Streets. Vinz is Jewish, Hubert a black boxer, and Said an Arab. Kassovitz has wrapped everything in a tight, expressive package, but skilfully avoids tokenism. Right and wrong are clearly delineated even from the first frame. But the director, who also wrote the script, never feels the need to hammer his point, preferring instead subtle pointers. Hubert changes a billboard ad from "the world belongs to you" to "the world belongs to us". And one of the three tries to 'switch off' the Eiffel Tower by clicking his fingers - like Carax's Mauvais Sang and Rochant's World Without Pity - but here it steadfastly remains alight.

This is only Kassovitz's second feature, and yet his command of technique is uncanny: close-ups, brilliant fluid camera moves, and a single, breathtaking helicopter track over the estate. He elects to shoot in an elegant black and white which at once reflects documentary realism, but also provides for a degree of unsettling surrealism. The trio's excursion into the city is increasingly nightmarish, an interlude at a swanky Parisian art gallery a memorable highlight.

If the film has a problem then it could certainly stand to lose ten minutes from its Parisian section, and it does have something of a difficulty with its female roles (all supporting), but these are minor quibbles. The balance of comedy and drama is deft, the use of music inspired, and the performances uniformly strong. And the climax, is striking for its speed and refusal to compromise.

Aptly titled and nihilistic, but redeemed by a degree of common humanity. The end is all it can be: ambiguous and fatalist. Kassovitz will struggle to make a better picture than this.