Detroit

Every stage of our lives is made up of a series of moments. Eventually, particular moments and incidents encompass our memories of that time.  A week, a day, a month, even a single night can be the nucleus of a period of our lives that span years.  We remember not how we felt throughout the whole time, but in those moments when we felt it the strongest.  Because that’s where our core was most shaken, perhaps to never be steadied  again.  As result of this, a single night becomes the week, it becomes the year, and eventually it becomes the very something that influences us for the remainder of our lives.  One night can define us; one action can become an imaginary line in our existence that we can look back on and say “that night separates my before and after.”  It’s how someone can go from understanding that every group has good and bad in them, to believing all are evil.  All because of the actions of a few on one night.

Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit is about one of those nights.   Though the title implies the film has a wider reach, it’s more about one location on one evening that encompassed all that was wrong during a very dark week in American history.   It’s about a seldom heard story that got lost in the fire during the five day 12th Street Riots in the summer of 1967 in Detroit.   When those five days were over, 43 people had died and hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage were caused because of brutality and racism.  The film is a dramatic re-telling of the beginnings of those riots, until it decides to settle in and be a dramatic re-telling of what happened at the Algiers Hotel during the night of July 25-26, and it’s subsequent aftermath.   Because the film chooses to adhere to history, though there is no definitive account of the proceedings, it makes everything feel as though it’s part-journalism/part-movie.  Sometimes the two don’t blend as well as Bigelow wants, but they each work in their own right.

Sadly the story is relevant to today, though I think the best way the film services current events is by showing audiences what it means to be a victim of racism…or at least what it feels like.   Not in the sense that you’ll know what it’s like to be a different skin color, but because you’ll know what it feels like to face a wall because of wrongfully empowered people as they toy with you.  That feeling of terror and persecution is where Detroit is at its best.  And it’s where the feelings of history and drama merge into one.

The film is told in three acts. The first sets up some of the main characters while introducing us to how the riots started.   It’s in this section that we get something that I would’ve expected from a film called Detroit.  But Bigelow is far more interested in what happens in the confined Act Two.  Whether or not this would have been a better film if it focused more on the riots is irrelevant; this film is about what happened at the Algiers Motel, the movie’s centerpiece.  The Algiers was a cheap motel known for prostitution and drugs. When combined law enforcement groups (local cops, state police, and national guard) believe they are being fired upon from one of the motel’s windows, they ransack the place. Resulting in one person dead and nine others (seven black men and two white women) being terrorized and forced to face a wall by three racist cops. There are plenty of members of the law enforcement that see how these three cops crossed the line, but they don’t want to get involved in a civil rights dispute, so they look the other way.  When physical intimidation fails to get the cops what they want (the name of the supposed “sniper”), they begin a game of psychological torture that goes even more wrong when one officer misunderstands what’s going on and kills one of the suspects.

 

 

This section of the film is so good, and so relentlessly upsetting that it may be too much for some.  Bigelow’s approach is similar to her efforts with The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, as the camera always feels over the shoulder or like its leaning in to catch every drop of sweat.  Some have said that this feels like a horror movie, and that’s true for this middle section, where it feels like serial killers have trapped a family in a house and force them to take part in a sadistic game.  But feelings of terror aside, this also has to pack an emotional punch, and it does thanks to the cast.  Detroit’s  “main” character is an almost Motown singer, Cleveland Larry Reed  (Algee Smith), who along with his friend, Fred Temple (Jacob Latimore), are on their way home from a canceled performance when they take refuge at The Algiers. There they meet Juli Hysell (Hannah Murray) and Karen Malloy (Kaitlyn Dever), two possible ways to get laid. Another man staying in the motel is Vietnam Vet Robert Green, played by Anthony Mackie. The three racist cops are portrayed by Will Poulter, Jack Reynor, and Ben O’Toole. John Boyega is Melvin Dismukes, a security guard who leaves his nearby post to help out the law enforcement.  The reason why this cast is so good is because they all feel like real people; some of them are flawed; some of them are awful; some of them are just unlucky.  Even the racist cops are shown to be human beings that are effected by the things they do and see, making them all the more upsetting as villains.

My issues with the film arise once this section at the Algiers ends and we move on to Act Three, which isn’t nearly as interesting, especially after being so emotionally beaten to a pulp during Act Two.   This is where history and drama failed to mix for me.  This is also where the film makes its point about how one night can change a person, and it can influence a forever divide.  I felt like the message was appropriate, but the film also delivered it too messily.  However you may find it to be incredibly moving depending on what you bring into it.  Maybe it will trigger heavy emotions and be an unpleasant and powerful experience.  Maybe you’ll wish it had more to say; maybe you’ll be thankful for what it did say.  Detroit wants to be about an all-encompassing and awful thing, personified through the events of single night.  Whatever it is you’re looking for, you’ll find really good movie.

Grade: B+