Detroit (2017)

It's a nazi prison guard film about race relations? It comes off sensationalist to the point of parody. I was going with it until they let the 'already murdered a guy' cop lead the charge for the second killing. Then he becomes this vile and evil caricature while everyone including military personnel just stand around letting this teenager go on a power trip. I have far more faith in the military and police and don't believe a thing on screen. I suspect they wanted Bigelow's war film background but with an 'in Detroit' hook, and all her attention to detail, cinematic mastery of space, image, and immersion, is used in full effect to terrorize the audience. She is a director's director, and one of the finest we have; some may not know how difficult and how much attention such a work would require to pull off so effortlessly. You could say Detroit presents a distortion of the cinema gift, a masterful thriller and film craft used to ensure its political message. The film presents it as a true story, and so it plays almost as if the Nazi war criminals were let off after Nuremberg, it's really enraging stuff. Then you understand why they preceded that with the most evil rendition of events. Flashes of Boyega's expressions of conscience and humanity resonate the most. The film is extreme in tone, hopeless, the villains win and you feel awful by the end of it, but I'm mixed on it, I admire Bigelow's great power of filmmaking, but I question its authenticity and tone.

Fmovies: It's 1967, and rioting and looting has broken out in the city of Detroit, with buildings being burned and shots being fired. The situation has progressed to the point that National Guard troops have been mobilized in the streets, and no one is safe. It's with this setting that the main story unfolds when shots are reported fired from a hotel, and police and troops converge on the building, leading to tense situation that leaves several people dead. The cast includes John Boyega as a black, uniformed security guard who gets swept up in events; Will Poulter as the leader of a trio of beat cops who take things too far; Algee Smith as an aspiring pop singer who has the misfortune of checking into the hotel; Anthony Mackie as a recently discharged Army veteran.

This seemed like the kind of film to ignite a firestorm of controversy, with its setting of racial unrest and us-vs-them police misconduct coming on the heels of the recent incidents across the country, from Ferguson to Baltimore. Maybe people were exhausted from the news, or perhaps other current event spectacles rendered past injustices as moot points, whatever the reason, the film flopped at the box office although the critics enjoyed it. I liked it as well, but not as much as they did. Bigelow and Boal previously collaborated on the superior The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty. They attempt a "you are there" cinema verite style that uses a lot of handheld camera and very little gloss or overly stylish cinematic tricks. They also made the wise decision to cast relative unknowns so as not to distract from the story, with the biggest names in the cast (Mackie and Krasinski) in lesser roles.

There's quite a bit of build up before the movie gets to its main focus, but that may have been necessary to explain the actions of those involved when things finally hit the fan. Running just under 2 and a half hours, I found it a bit over long, and could have seen at least 15 minutes trimmed away. The performances are good for the most part, but I'm not too fond of Poulter. This isn't a bad movie at all, but it is hardly a stand-out in Bigelow's catalog of films.

Detroit is the latest addition to Kathryn Bigelow's lengthy filmography and it is the most Bigelow-esque film you'd come to expect from her. The film displays raw realism with the actors looking very real and naked from their famous personas. The story is jam packed and while I think this source material would have made a much better miniseries, Bigelow makes the story work with sacrificing some facts for the sake of cinema. The big question is: is it as good as the critics say it is? The answer: No. Not Close. But with that being said, it is a damn good movie that is definitely worth seeing.

Telling the story of three murdered African American men in a motel in Detroit during the city's infamous riots and civil rights movement, Detroit stars an all star cast that is certainly better on paper than they are in this film. John Boyega, Will Poulter, Jason Mitchell, Anthony Mackie, John Krasinski, and on and on-but none of them are really served as a main character. Bigelow is so determined on telling the facts of the case that she sacrifices good performances in order to give us a slice of reality. The film plays out like the most expensive reenactment of a tragedy on Investigation Discovery and, when looking at the facts of the case, this is the best compliment I can give the film. It sounds back handed but it is extremely informative even if it is picking a side in all of it. The one thing Bigelow does best is showing a true story like it is unfolding in front of you. She does it brilliantly in The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, but Detroit is where it is to a fault.

With a 140-plus minute running time and a gaggle of characters to keep track of, the story is just too big for a feature film and requires patience. Despite this, Kathryn Bigelow does her best to tame Mark Boal's bloated script to a digestible film and the results are mostly good. The performances from the actors are real, raw and authentic in every aspect but never enough to burst off the screen. Bigelow lets the events unfold and do that for them. Overall, Detroit is certainly a good film in need of an audience just a very patient one.

Detroit fmovies. Director Katheryn Bigelow does a wonderful job of creating a great deal of tension. She does so by cutting from one tightly framed slightly wobbly shot to the next. Each character's face floods nearly the entire screen after each of these cuts. This makes the movie deeply personal and almost claustrophobic at times. The slight wobbles of the camera as it focuses on a face, adds to the uneasiness and unstable nature of the situation.

What I'm saying is the movie is expertly directed. That's evident early on and remains that way throughout. The issue holding this movie back from becoming one of serious best picture caliber is the writing. The story felt a bit underdeveloped.

The brief on-screen text explanation of the tension between the Detroit Police and the city's black residents could have served as a helpful addition to a setup that followed in the movie. I would have had no problem with that. But after the movie plays for 20 minutes or so, I realized that the text was the sole source of setup.

That's a classic case of telling instead of showing. Movies are a video medium. Use that. Don't casually display the text on screen. This choice may have been made for the sake of time, but I think the filmmakers would have been wise to focus more on the setup aspect. The text explanation felt like an inconsiderate means of storytelling.

After the opening text, the movie meanders for a while, eventually introducing the key characters and providing an appetizer of their personalities, foreshadowing their upcoming behavior.

Moments like these showcased strengths in the writing. The writing did not completely ruin the movie; it simply was not an Oscar-contending performance, like Bigelow's work.

The movie overall is well made, thanks in large part to Bigelow's deft direction, but it's not without flaws. One that I already mentioned is that I wanted the actual movie (not solely text) to better set the stage of this city that's on the verge of riot.

The second criticism ties into the first. Because of the lack of stage setting, this becomes a movie that expertly depicts the what, but fails to fully deliver on the why.

I see the riots. I see the emotional toll that police misconduct had on the abused citizens. I see the guilt that certain uniformed personnel felt for standing by and allowing the abuse to take place. What I didn't see enough of is why all this happened. I wanted a more personal detailing of what led up to the night shown in the movie. The actions are clear and powerful, but the motivations are vague and weak.

I came away from the movie wondering what message the filmmakers hoped to convey. While the title is Detroit, the story has a much narrower focus. Were the clear majority of Detroit City Police Officers upstanding in their behavior, with only a few tragic bad apples? Given the choice focus on only a few officers and a select group of citizens, should I assume that these officers' misconduct was the norm or the exception?

Perhaps it was not the filmmakers' intent to answer these questions. Maybe they only wanted to tell this specific story, without greater implications, which is fine. I just personally wanted to see a broader depiction of the city's atmosphere leading up to, during, and following the riots.

Unless you believe the Black Lives Matters movement has unanimous appeal, do not expect the reviews of Kathryn Bigelow's "Detroit" to garner universal praise. By no means does this movie play it safe and, for that reason, it does not seek or expect mass appeal. I suspect that the film will unleash fierce critics of "Hollywood Liberal Bias" and generate howls from those who want to remind us that most cops really are good as well as others who are equally vocal and can't stomach seeing more non-threatening citizens brutally murdered by policemen of a different stripe.

"Detroit" is a movie that is set in 1967 but it is a statement about the type of policing that continues to occur far too frequently in many African American communities. Just as it is not possible to talk about the recent events in Ferguson, NYC, Minneapolis,Baltimore, Chicago, Charleston, Cleveland etc., etc. without expressing a particular point of view, "Detroit" will also reveal many pf our biases as we process the portrayal of the searing events as they may have occurred at the Algiers Motel in the midst of a race riot.

"Detroit" will also force us to talk about our preferences for films that move and disturb us over those that simply entertain and the amount of "historical accuracy" we expect to see in non- documentaries that are set in earlier times.

Bigelow shoots the movie with an unflinching eye and her point of view is obvious. She errs on the side of the cringe worthy and outrageous when depicting evil and the actors are committed, inspired and superbly directed.

"Detroit" is a film that is as difficult to watch as any two hour merciless tragedy involving people we know and care about and it is deeply stirring as it incites (if not assaults) our emotions. This is a stunning film but well crafted art, like our own reflections in the finest of mirrors, isn't always pretty.

"Detroit" intends to upset, provoke and unsettle and, by that account, it is an unmitigated success.

The poster of Annapurna's newest film, Detroit hangs at my local theater like a provocation. A thin blue line of police officers struggles to hold back angry black protesters as big bold letters are scrawled along the side. The tagline reads: "It's time we knew." Those words, along with the required "from the creators of..." accolades are the only things on the poster that aren't sideways.

They might as well be though, considering the 1967 Detroit riot is about the only thing about Detroit most Americans know. And I'm sad to report that while the film does a good job of filling the screen with a few powerful moments, it never provides much insight into the "untold" story of the Motor City or how its story fits into the larger context of modern racial relations.

After an awkward Jacob Lawrence inspired history of the Great Migration, the film captures the precipitating actions of police that turned the city's long sitting racial resentments into a lit tinderbox. In a hybrid of dramatization and archival footage, Detroit then glosses over the actions taken by the state to subdue tensions before setting its sights on a host of singular stories. It becomes high noon at the Algiers Motel where unarmed black teens face off against white police and National Guardsmen. Then comes the trial.

All of these events could have been their own movies and delved into deeper depths as to the cause, devastation, aftermath and public perception of what was later dubbed the black days of July. Yet because Mark Boal's screenplay is so laser-focused on documented events and momentary minutia, everything is squished into an off-kilter collage of well-meaning but superficial docudrama. One whose central story, the Algiers Motel incident, is treated more like a genre horror film than either a granular traumatic event or police brutality in microcosm.

Detroit basically pulls a Dunkirk (2017), building unbelievable tension while giving us the bear minimum in character. It's all about the situation and the situation only. The recreation of which is beyond reproach. However, Detroit's grand design creates a narrative dissonance. One in which the individual experiences of real people just don't translate all that well.

The problem is compounded further by Barry Ackroyd's unvarnished cinematography which cuts between extreme closeups of wounded faces, voyeuristic overheads and wide shots of crowds angrily gathering in the streets. The lack of establishing shots, aerials, use of recognizable landmarks etc. hammers home the idea that something like this can happen anywhere. But the question, why can it happen anywhere, remains illusive up until we here the words "police criminality should be treated the same as criminality." By then it's too little too late.

Luckily director Kathryn Bigelow is very adept at inserting humanity within the margins saving Detroit from being just another Patriot's Day (2016). She finds a particularly redemptive subject in Algee Smith as up-and-coming Motown singer Larry Reed. The young actor displays an emotional intelligence well beyond his years, formulating a character that starts out with youthful swagger, ends with a shaken core, putting you in his head-space at all points in-between. Additionally, while most of the films attempts to color opposing forces with shades of grey fall flat, Reed's arc feels tragic but sadly understandable given the circumstance.

Unfortunately for both Bi