Is Kathryn Bigelow's 'Detroit' Worth Seeing? Here's What The Reviews Say
Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal have impressed filmgoers twice with their nuanced portrayals of real life events in "Zero Dark Thirty" and "The Hurt Locker." "Detroit," out August 4th, depicts a sordid instance of racist police violence from the '60s. Are Bigelow and Boal — working with actors John Boyega and Will Poulter in lead roles — equipped to handle this material? Here's what the reviews say:
'Detroit' Focuses On An Intense Standoff Instead Of The Citywide Turmoil
The Detroit Rebellion of 1967 was a vocal response to the escalating tensions between the African American population of the city, the Detroit police force, and a city government that continuously endangered both with its sustained negligence.
The meat of the film, where Bigelow finds greatest emotional purchase, is in the unbearably tense second act. A group of corrupt white cops (led by an intimidating Will Poulter) barge into the Algiers Motel in search of a shooter. In truth, there was no shooter, just a guy (Jason Mitchell) with a starter pistol showing off to a room of his friends and a pair of white girls (Kaitlyn Dever and Game of Thrones' Hannah Murray). Caught up in the mix were soul singer Larry (Algee Smith) and his friend Fred (Jacob Latimore), who were just trying to get off the streets and into safety. Little did they know they picked the worst possible place to look for it. After gunning down one black man immediately upon entering the building, the cops immediately begin making excuses ("Why was he running?") and planting evidence to justify the killing.
The First Act Paints The City's Issues With Broad Strokes
Bigelow opens with paintings by the late Jacob Lawrence, lightly animated, depicting the Great Migration of African Americans from the South during the period before World War I, and the "white flight" that left many cities, including Detroit, in disarray, fomenting racial disparity between largely black urban neighborhoods and the white police forces patrolling them.
Although history declares the event as a "riot", Bigelow depicts as a conflict between two factions, with Detroit looking more like an occupied city rather than a thriving American metropolis. The conflict comes about because despite Detroit having an overwhelmingly black population, the police force is primarily white, and that force sees their job as keeping order at any cost.
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Once Inside The Algiers Motel, 'Detroit' Becomes A Different Film
Focusing initially on the Detroit riots of 1967, the film depicts both the riot itself and the circumstances leading up to it with such care and attention to detail, along with genuine empathy, that it's jarring to see it switch, suddenly, to the somewhat-untold story of the incident at the Algiers Motel in which Detroit police executed three African-Americans in a vain search for a non-existent sniper.
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The standoff at the Algiers disrupts the pacing and balance of the picture, and if the movie never quite recovers, that's because these people never do; it's a festering psychological wound that will keep coming back and threaten to take over their lives. In other words, Bigelow uses the incident as a disorganizing principle. The length and intensity of this sequence, and the structural chaos it creates for the film, allow us to feel, to some extent, the trauma of the event.
The Algiers becomes a trap, not only for the characters, who are stuck inside at the mercy of a maniac, but for the film itself, which loses its political and psychological coherence as the night drags on. Krauss, with his disconcertingly boyish looks and his sophomoric attempts to seem thoughtful, is a callow sociopath. His fellow officers Flynn (Ben O'Toole) and Demens (Jack Reynor) contribute sexual hysteria (when they see white women in the company of black men) and sheer idiocy.
At Points 'Detroit' Feels Like A Horror Movie
"Detroit" is bookended by historical Cliffs notes that implore viewers to take a step back and consider the big picture, but the extended set-piece at the center of the movie is solely focused on survival. Most of it is filmed in extreme close-up, history coming back at us through the beads of sweat on Krauss' forehead, blood drying on the girls' foreheads, and the fear in Robert Greene's eyes. There's no escape from this, no looking away as Bigelow uses the tropes of horror cinema to distill a physiological response to institutional racism.
The movie shifts from a sociological document in the vein of director Kathryn Bigelow's and screenwriter Mark Boal's Zero Dark Thirty and The Hurt Locker into a home invasion nightmare movie in which the police are Freddy and Jason and Michael Myers.
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John Boyega's Role Sticks Out In The Ensemble
Throughout the film, the most complex and troubling character is Boyega's Dismukes, a black security officer who initially places himself on the side of the police in an effort to defuse the situation and protect other black civilians from being unduly targeted. But as he watches, participates, and later realizes just what his role was in the proceedings, he grows increasingly sickened by it all. Boyega's fine performance telegraphs most of Dismukes's growing dismay through his eyes, as he slowly realizes the system he counted on to treat everyone equally under the law simply isn't going to do so.
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While John Boyega has been top-billed for his performance as Melvin Dismukes, a security guard who stumbles into aiding the blatantly racist cops and armed forces that realize the civil rights violations happening but do nothing to stop it, he's too passive a character to leave much of an impression. In standing by his position as an authority figure and helping these white cops, Melvin becomes complicit in their horror. Boyega is a charismatic actor, but he gives a flat performance, although it's the script that's more of a problem. Mark Boal skirts around the issue of Melvin's complicity, leaving an interesting story on the table.
The Filmmakers Might Be Too Disconnected From The Pain They Depict
To some, the film will undoubtedly serve as a cry for empathy and action, illustrating truths that are so often reduced to opinion-based debate. To others, it may well ring as a lurid re-enactment of a hideous real-life incident, a recounting of disturbing events all too common for some to benefit those for whom they're not.
There are, of course, a litany of films by white filmmakers about subject matter unique to the black experience that I find moving—"The Color Purple" comes to mind. But Steven Spielberg's film was based on a novel by Alice Walker and produced by Quincy Jones. "Detroit" was directed, written, produced, shot, and edited by white creatives who do not understand the weight of the images they hone in on with an unflinching gaze.
'Detroit' Ends With An Epilogue That Accomplishes Little
Bigelow is too burly and clobbering a director for a courtroom scene to get her dander up, even one meant to be charged with such urgency. It's just … another courtroom scene. It makes the movie curiously unbalanced, an intriguing beginning leading into a thunderous middle followed by a middling, familiar finish. The movie is still angry in its last third. But it has no original way to express it.
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Aside from a few poignant character details and a maddening scene in which detectives look at Dismukes in a new light, the film's exasperating final chapter says in 25 minutes what a title card could have said with the same impact in 25 seconds. In doing so, it reduces most of its characters to their most basic facts, scattering them to the winds instead of watching their wounds scab over.
TL;DR
Detroit wants to tell us about the horrors of what happened at the Algiers Motel, and it also wants to put it in the context of the Detroit riots themselves and American race relations in general. It might have done too powerful a job of the former, however, to fully connect itself to the latter. It's an overwhelming horror movie—maybe a little too overwhelming.
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