Film Review - Detroit (15)

What happened at the motel?

Detroit would have been a timely film even before recent events in Charlottesville, Virginia. Now that race hate in the US has been making so many international news headlines, it feels positively essential. Focusing on the harrowing 'Algiers Motel' incident that occurred during Detroit's '12th Street Riot' of July 1967, the film provides a unique and deeply disturbing insight into the depth of racial division that exists in America, then and now. Events of fifty years ago feel horribly contemporary when depicted on screen in fashion like this. 

The film provides a crystal sense of context for the incident in question, sketching the origins of Detroit's racial issues in a neat prologue before depicting the outbreak of the riots themselves. The violence is realised in an impressively authentic way - a crucial spark igniting this tinderbox of race-based tension, in scenes reminiscent of actual news footage. Those of us who watched the 2011 London riots play out might well be struck by the similarity.

The key players in the drama are introduced deftly too - a knot of young cops with an agenda, an aspiring Motown singer and his buddy, a clutch of motel party-goers and a security guard who happens on the scene... These lives converge on the evening of July 25th 1967, in events that turn heart-pounding in their sense of real life horror. The depiction of the evening is pieced together from real accounts of those involved, dramatic imagination filling in the gaps. However close the screenplay gets to the truth of what really happened, Detroit serves as an ugly reflection on modern US history.

The movie is directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who provides the same muscularity she demonstrated in The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty. It's a story requiring grit and utter fearlessness and she brings both, neither she nor the camera flinching in what they are asked to portray. Mark Boal's taut screenplay is shot with clarity - grim without being exploitative, horrific due to the realness of the emotion captured. While there is some use of shaky-camera to convey panic and disorientation, it's not enough to cause motion sickness. Any nausea stems rather from the idea that these events, or anything close to them, occurred in the first place.

The cast is peppered with familiar faces. Star Wars' John Boyega is nuanced as the wrong-place/wrong-time security guy and Anthony Mackie, heroic in the Captain America movies, is subdued and fearful here as a motel party-goer. In truth, however, this is not a film for stars or heroes. It's about a whole group's response to unfolding trauma and on that level the entire cast delivers with performances both raw and real. Stand-outs are arguably Will Poulter as a fresh-faced cop and Algee Smith as golden-voiced singer Larry, but most of all this is one hell of an ensemble effort.

Detroit is not an easy watch, nor should it be. The dramatic twists are messy and unpredictable, the outcomes frayed and frustrating. This is a serious take on real events of the darkest kind and anything less would short-change those involved. Fifty years have passed since the riots and the fateful night at the Algiers Motel. That this film doesn't even feel like a period piece is the most frightening thing of all.

Gut Reaction: Gut-punched repeatedly. And moved.

Ed's Verdict: You might endure rather than enjoy, but this is a fine film - jarring and confrontational, but also full of humanity.