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| photo courtesy of teaser-trailer.com |
WARNING: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS (but it’s also based on history, so
get over it)
From Annapurna Pictures and
Academy-Award winning director Kathryn Bigelow comes Detroit, a semi-historical crime drama. The film takes place during
the 1967 riots, but it centers on the Algiers Motel Incident, in which a group
of young black men (and two white women) were detained and brutally
interrogated by Detroit police officers and three black men were shot. Detroit features Star Wars hero John Boyega as Melvin Dismukes, Will Poulter as
Philip Krauss, Algee Smith as Larry Reed, and a host of actors in other roles—notably
John Krasinski as Attorney Auerbach and Malcom David Kelley (WAAAAAAALT from Lost) as Michael Clark.
Detroit courts a certain degree of
controversy, altering the historical subject matter with a series of insertions
and omissions. Because the officers were never officially convicted for the
murder of the three black men, the film skirts around the point, providing
several stand-in officers with changed names (plus one original police character)
and presenting security guard Dismukes in an entirely sympathetic light. Those
choices open the movie up to charges of shifting blame from guilty officers.
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| photo courtesy of theatlantic.com |
On the other hand, the movie also lays
the blame for the deaths squarely at white officers’ feet—not only the officers
who pulled the trigger, but many others who looked the other way—paving the way
for charges from the other direction. On top of that, the movie has received
justifiable criticism for failing to satisfactorily explore black life, motivations
for the riots, or the subsequent Citywide Citizen’s Action Committee tribunal.
All this to say… Detroit invites
quite a bit of argument from quite a few sources.
Controversy aside, Detroit displays both compelling storytelling and excellent
craftsmanship. Bigelow impresses in the director’s chair, capturing the sense
of chaos and claustrophobia that permeates the setting. The early riot scenes
are particularly effective, relaying Detroit’s descent into violence in a
series of quick sequences. Bigelow relies on frantic, handheld shots and fast
cuts to convey the frenzy of the riots, but for the most part close-ups
dominate the frame, reflecting the in-your-face, invasive interrogation
techniques employed by the officers. The movie also includes an artsy, painted
prologue sequence.
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| photo courtesy of ew.com |
From a storytelling standpoint, I think
Detroit has its weaknesses. It feels
too journalistic, too distant from its characters for most of the film. The
visual, visceral nature of the injustice takes center stage, so the filmmakers
spend less time giving the audience a specific point of view through which to
interpret the events.
Two characters are given the most
attention—Boyega’s Dismukes and Smith’s Larry Reed—but the movie shifts between
them at pivotal moments, making it unclear which character is intended to be at
the forefront. The ending, which sees Reed finally get a job at a local church,
seems to imply that it has been his story all along, but the movie’s split
focus has not made that clear up to that point. Even so, Smith’s acting and the
construction of the sequence are solid enough to bring the film to a strong
close.
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| photo courtesy of imdb.com |
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