Detroit
Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow
Written by: Mark Boal
Starring: Algee Smith, Jacob Latimore, Will Poulter, John Boyega, Anthony Mackie, Hannah Murray, Kaitlyn Dever, Ben O'Toole, Jack Reynor, Jason Mitchell, Nathan Davis Jr., Peyton 'Alex' Smith, Malcolm David Kelly, John Krasinski, Joseph David-Jones, Gbenga Akinnagbe
Crime/Drama/History - 143 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 27 Jul 2017
Written by: Mark Boal
Starring: Algee Smith, Jacob Latimore, Will Poulter, John Boyega, Anthony Mackie, Hannah Murray, Kaitlyn Dever, Ben O'Toole, Jack Reynor, Jason Mitchell, Nathan Davis Jr., Peyton 'Alex' Smith, Malcolm David Kelly, John Krasinski, Joseph David-Jones, Gbenga Akinnagbe
Crime/Drama/History - 143 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 27 Jul 2017
I’ve heard about the Detroit riots before, the same way I’ve heard about the riots in Watts; meaning, I’ve only briefly heard mention of them. Like the average movie-goer, I don’t really know anything about them. American Pastoral touched on the Newark riots and the documentary The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution explored Oakland, but Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty) ensures everyone will know what went down in 1967 Detroit. Leading with an animated intro on the great African American migration northward after World War I seeking jobs and a better life only to find a similar struggle in the civil rights realm, Detroit is a sobering account of a mortifying episode which took place at the Algiers Motel one night during the chaos.
Unfortunately, Detroit and Bigelow’s historical account is timely in our time of Ferguson, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, and countless other recent atrocities. Many will wonder if anything has really changed at all. This is the 50th anniversary of the Detroit riots, which when you say it out loud, sounds like too long ago for so many similarities to pop up. Yet, there are still mostly white cops in the confined and repressed black neighborhoods. There are still the economic and social disadvantages spurring the racial divide. Mark Boal’s script gives the briefest of history lessons on how ghettos formed and how entire urban zip codes morphed into black areas as the whites fled to the suburbs.
Unfortunately, Detroit and Bigelow’s historical account is timely in our time of Ferguson, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, and countless other recent atrocities. Many will wonder if anything has really changed at all. This is the 50th anniversary of the Detroit riots, which when you say it out loud, sounds like too long ago for so many similarities to pop up. Yet, there are still mostly white cops in the confined and repressed black neighborhoods. There are still the economic and social disadvantages spurring the racial divide. Mark Boal’s script gives the briefest of history lessons on how ghettos formed and how entire urban zip codes morphed into black areas as the whites fled to the suburbs.
Yet, about a half hour in, the tragic events unfold like a horror movie. Leading us inside the motel is Larry Reed (Algee Smith), an aspiring singer on the edge of a Motown contract. Along with his cousin, Fred (Jacob Latimore, The Maze Runner), the two spring for the cheap hotel to obey the city-wide curfew enforced by the Detroit Police Department, the Michigan State Police, and the Michigan National Guard. Actual news footage of George Romney, yes, you know who's father, has him calling for law and order and deploying the tanks and armored personnel carriers into the streets. The Army is made to fight wars, not conduct crowd control. When a nervous soldier fires his gargantuan .50 caliber machine gun into a window where a girl no older than three or four watches, all the audience can do is audibly shudder and gasp.
Nearby the motel, security guard Melvin Dismukes (John Boyega, Star Wars: The Force Awakens) guards a grocery store and offers coffee to the Guardsmen trying to get on their good sides and play the ally. When what they think is sniper fire rings out, everyone hits the deck. Zeroing in on the Algiers Motel Annex, a motley force of ill-trained, overtly racist, and trigger happy law enforcement peppers the place with lead, lines the guests up against the wall, and commences with the hours long psychological torture, and eventually, murder.
It wasn’t sniper fire. All the witnesses, Boal’s research, and Bigelow’s film say it was a toy starter pistol. Furthermore, no gun was even found at the scene. Not good enough for Officer Phillip Krauss (Will Poulter, The Revenant). Already shown to have shot a man in the back who was looting groceries and pending murder charges, Krauss engages his weak-willed, lower-ranking lackeys in a sickening reign of terror on Larry and Fred, a half-dozen other young men, and two white girls. The girls, drifting north from Ohio, may or may not have been prostitutes, but once they’re discovered in the company of black men, the hate in the hallway boils over.
The cops yell out questions like why these girls would choose black men over their own kind. One of the girls screams, “It’s 1967!” We know now 1967 is not the year one would yell to exclaim that times have changed and the backwards way of looking at inter-racial relations moved a step forward. The cops tolerate Melvin’s presence. Melvin is there attempting to defuse the tension, but he’s as effective as the school’s duck and cover practice drills would have been against Soviet nukes. There are no supernatural elements involved, but horror is the best genre I can use to describe the atrocities perpetrated in the hallway.
The film wraps up with some courtroom scenes with the all white jury’s verdict we all knew was coming. Even in 2017, expectations for justice and rule-of-law are eye-rolled at and mocked when it comes to jurisprudence against law enforcement. The Algiers Motel has long since faded from memories and for anyone born after 1967, you more than likely have never heard of it. Remarkably, some of the victims are still alive and aided the filmmakers with their first-hand accounts. Massachusetts stands in for Michigan and anything to do with the Algiers had to be rebuilt as the real one was razed to the ground. The production design is top-notch late-‘60s and the jittery camera work keeps us on our toes; there is no sitting back and observing here. We bob and weave with the action on screen. Walking out, many of us may identify with the angry mob surrounding the politician yelling into his bullhorn, “Calm down, change is coming! ” Even in 1967, the aggrieved knew change was farther away than they knew.
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