DETROIT – Review

A scene from Kathryn Bigelow’s DETROIT. Photo by Francois Duhamel. Courtesy of Annapurna Pictures (c) 

In DETROIT, director Kathryn Bigelow spotlights the civil unrest that shook Detroit in the summer of 1967, and particularly the infamous events that took place at the Algiers Motel, when police abused a group of mostly black men and killed three. One would have hoped that 50 years on, we would be looking back those events and noting how far we have come. Sadly, that is not the case.

The award-winning director of THE HURT LOCKER and ZERO DARK THIRTY tackles an event that took place 50 years ago yet seems timely now, in the light of Michael Brown and Ferguson, and other recent incidents of police violence and public outrage. It is certainly a worthy subject but the film itself has some flaws. Like in ZERO DARK THIRTY, Bigelow takes awhile to bring the subject into focus, spending a long time painting a picture of the unrest in the city before settling down to tell the story of what happened in the Algiers Motel.

The year 1967 was a time of high tensions, with growing anger over the escalating Vietnam War and simmering resentment among African-Americans in poor urban areas over decades of racial injustice and socioeconomic repression. The incident that lit the fire in Detroit was a raid on an illegal after-hours club. As police loaded club patrons into paddy wagons, they could feel the growing anger of a gathering crowd. Looting broke out and soon the city was engulfed in a wave of anger and violence. Over two days of unrest, the National Guard were mobilized to help Detroit police and Michigan troopers restore order. In this heated atmosphere, reports of gun fire near a National Guard staging area put the focus on the Algiers Motel’s annex, where police engaged in a brutal and illegal interrogation of Motel guests.

Bigelow makes the incident in the Algiers Motel the narrative focus but first sets the stage by establishing what was happening in Detroit that summer. Bigelow uses a combination of scenes recreating the events in the streets and actual archival footage and news reports to create a striking portrait of the civil unrest. In doing so, the director introduces a number of characters. While this prologue gives a much stronger sense of the shocking historic events, audiences are left wondering about the film’s main characters and its narrative direction.

Eventually, Bigelow brings together several of these characters, including a racist white cop (Will Poulter, THE REVENANT) who has few qualms about breaking rules, an African-American security guard (John Boyega, STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS) trying to protect a store from looters, and an ambitious musician (Algee Smith, ARMY WIVES) poised for stardom. The cast also includes Anthony Mackie as a just-returned Vietnam vet and John Krasinski as a police investigator.

Like ZERO DARK THIRTY, the film aims to place the audience in the center of events. It presents a recreation of events in the Algiers Motel, based on historical records and the memories of still-living participants, but exactly what happened at the Algiers Motel cannot be completely known.

After several days of riots and unrest, and reports of snipers, the reports of gun fire bring Detroit police and Michigan National Guard to the motel annex, along with security guard Dismukes, who had been bring coffee to the guard as a friendly gesture. Dismukes goes along hoping to be a calming influence, but finds himself caught up in events. As the Detroit police ramp up efforts to force a confession from anyone, the National Guard withdraw, not wanting to be caught up in a racial incident, rather than taking steps to stop it.

The sense of actually being there that the film creates makes the violent, shocking events an intense, frightening experience. The dramatic tension is certainly high throughout the film, and several of the actors deliver strong performances, notably Boyega as security guard Dismukes, who tries to deescalate tensions, and Poulter in the unenviable role as the racist cop Kraus.

One of the most moving stories is that of singer Larry Reed, played by Algee Smith. As the lead singer of The Dramatics, his shot at stardom is interrupted when rioting outside the Apollo cause police to evacuate the theater just as the group is taking the stage. Caught in the turmoil outside, Reed and his friend Fred Temple (Jacob Lattimore) take refuge in the Algiers Motel, which is packed, and find themselves in the motel’s annex, where the fateful events take place. Still the film’s structure leaves the actors little room to work and we learn little about the characters we are watching.

The film takes us past the horrendous events in the Algiers to the shocking follow-up, as some of the people involved are put on trial. The police violence and trial sequence will feel all too familiar in light of recent events.

DETROIT offers a remarkable portrait of an event 50 years ago, famous then but largely forgotten now. While the history lesson is admirable, the disturbing part is seeing the same police abuses then as now – perhaps even worse now, given the militarization of police forces on display during the Ferguson unrest. The film raises important questions, and one has to wonder if it is time, at last, we rethink how we train police, if we hope to see history stop repeating itself in this matter. Whether Bigelow’s DETROIT will spark that conversation remains to be seen.

RATING: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars