Kathryn Bigelow's latest effort is a docudrama
about the 1967 Detroit riots, focusing on a specific incident of police
violence against a group of black men at a hotel and so here is my review of
Detroit (2017)
Director:
Kathryn BigelowWriter:
Mark BoalStars:
Country:
USALanguage:
EnglishRelease Date:
4 August 2017 (USA) See more »Also Known As:
Детройт See more »Company Credits
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Color:
ColorAspect Ratio:
1.85 : 1
A set depicting Detroit 1967 was also built in Brockton, Massachusetts,
right at the site of the Liberty Tree, a sycamore planted in 1863 which
marked a stop on the Underground Railroad where, during the Civil War,
slaves on their way north to freedom were hidden during the day in the
stables of Edward Bennett so they could travel at night under the cover
of darkness. Filming took place here during September 2016.
It involves the death of three black men and the brutal beatings of nine other people: seven black men and two white women.
A particularly nasty historical instance
of police brutality against African-Americans is wrenched back into the
spotlight on its 50th anniversary in Detroit. Shot docudrama
style with an emphasis on visceral force above all else, this third
collaboration over a nine-year stretch between director Kathryn Bigelow
and writer Mark Boal, after The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, emerges,
creatively, as the least of the trio; intense and physically powerful
in the way it conveys its atrocious events, the film nonetheless remains
short on complexity, as if it were enough simply to provoke and outrage
the audience. It's a grim tale with no catharsis. Annapurna Pictures'
first feature film release can't help but stir plenty of sympathetic
attention in the press and among political activists, but audiences keen
to put themselves through this wringer will remain somewhat limited.
Like Nate Parker's now conveniently forgotten The Birth of a Nation last
year, the new film is a based-on-real-events drama determined to pummel
the viewer with a tough, unvarnished perspective on a violent episode
in American racial annals that's deeply unsettling. Historically,
there's little question that in Detroit the white authorities were the
bad guys, so unless the creative artists are inclined to delve beneath
this rendering to examine nuances on both sides, it's uncertain what the
film has to offer other than a punch to the gut.
The match that lit the fire on July 23,
1967, was a police raid on a Detroit after-hours bar in a black
neighborhood where friends were celebrating the return of two locals
from the Vietnam War. Things got out of hand, to the point where a local
black assemblyman implored his constituents not to “mess up your own
neighborhood.” But looting and destruction increased, more cops were
sent in, the National Guard was called upon to protect the police and
after three days, Detroit began to be compared to 'Nam itself.
This is a film that begins darkly and
only becomes moreso. Bigelow and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd cover the
initially random street violence with jittery, abrupt camera moves,
much as a documentary camera operator might nervously re-point and
refocus on unpredictable events based on where the action is. Shop
windows are broken, stores are looted, and shouts and occasional
gunshots of unknown origin fill the very dark nights.
In its depiction of this cauldron of
helter-skelter violence lies the implicit and entirely plausible
suggestion that the mainly white police in every instance overreacted to
what was going on; if the wee-hours revelers had just been left alone
on that first night, it's implied that nothing untoward would likely
have resulted. But heavy-handed response seems to have been the force's
modus operandi.
The main personal connection screenwriter
Boal provides to all this comes through an enthusiastic young man named
Larry Reed (Algee Smith), the smoothly appealing lead singer of a slick
all-male group called The Dramatics scheduled to perform right after
Martha and the Vandellas at a big downtown theater. When the tumult
outside cuts the concert short right before his hoped-for star-making
moment, Larry is devastated, and his own disinterest in what's going
down on the streets is clearly provided as a lifeline to viewers
unversed in the incident.
So the point is made that if Larry can't
avoid being sucked into Detroit's tragedy, neither can anyone else. On
this third night of rioting, July 25, with the city hot and dangerous,
Larry and his reluctant buddy Fred (Jacob Latimore) take refuge at the
Algiers Hotel, a seedy place with a pool and rear annex where drugs and
hookers are not unwelcome. The only whites around are two teenage girls,
Julie Ann (Hannah Murray) and Karen (Kaitlyn Dever), who appear to be
up for anything and are palling around with a wild guy, Carl (Jason
Mitchell), upstairs. Julie and Larry quickly hit it off, Fred is
petrified and Carl plays fast and loose with a small toy gun.
Thus begins a long night's journey into
hell. In the film's arduous, protracted and incendiary second act, the
overwhelmingly white police force once again overreacts, raiding the
hotel in the belief that there's a sniper inside and, once committed,
cannot back off without exerting maximum force on their multiple
suspects. Carl is immediately shot dead, while several others on the
premises, including Larry and Fred, are shoved up against a wall and
subjected to no end of physical and mental abuse.
The cop in charge, Philip Krauss (Will Poulter, the kid in The Revenant),
is a hideous racist and sadist of the worst kind (he's also a fictional
character, presumably, because whomever he's based on in real life was
found innocent in court and can't be depicted as doing what the
character is seen doing onscreen). Beating his terrified captives as
they keep denying that anyone shot at the police or knows where the gun
is, the baby-faced cretin is somewhat of a caricature — callow,
sadistic, meanly manipulative, prideful in his reckless use of power and
snickeringly snide in his continual reminders of how he's the one in
charge here and you're not.
Krauss' favorite game is to take his
“suspects” into an adjoining room, threaten them with a bullet in the
head unless they spill, then pull the trigger but deliberately miss,
re-enter the hallway and announce that he's just killed that suspect and
the same will happen to the next one if he or she doesn't talk. This
gambit is interrupted by the arrival, at intervals, of the National
Guard, the Michigan State Police and a well-meaning security guard,
Melvin Dismukes (John Boyega), who's popped up before but is powerless
to do anything to restrain the maniacal Krauss.
But when Krauss has another young officer
join his nasty game, things go drastically wrong, resulting in more
death, a cover-up and outright lies that carry all the way through the
subsequent trials at which the policemen were eventually exonerated by
all-white juries in courts outside Detroit. And even poor Dismukes, who
only wanted to help but was powerless to do so, was investigated for
murder in an example of outrageous legal overreach.
It's impossible to sit through all this
and not ponder how things are, or are not, the same a full half-century
after the events on display. The highly publicized rash of seemingly
unwarranted police shootings of black victims in recent years have led
many to insist that things basically haven't changed; others would point
out that major city urban police forces are far more integrated than
they used to be and that the kind of brash, overtly racist police
behavior on display in Detroit would be an egregious exception rather than the rule these days.
Unfortunately, the film makes no effort
to try to understand or present the police as anything other than
monolithically heinous; except for Krauss, they're scarcely more
individuated than Darth Vader's shock troops.
From a strictly stylistic point of view,
this third consecutive collaboration between Bigelow and Ackroyd is not
on the level of the previous two; the nervous camera coverage of the
riots and other action feels a tad overcalculated and lacks evocative
composition. Visually, this is possibly the director's least striking
film.
Compensating considerably for these
shortcomings are many of the castmembers. Even if the characters are not
deeply developed in the writing, the mostly young performers makes
strong impressions and seem in the moment at all times. Smith is
engaging as the talented young singer whose life course is entirely
changed by this one night, and Anthony Mackie, who prominently figured
in Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, scores again as a recently returned Army vet.
Boyega, now well known due to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, stirs
sympathy as a regular guy whose desire to help only lands him in deep
trouble, while Mitchell, in his brief appearance, delivers a live-wire
unpredictability as the guy who appears to have unwittingly provoked the
police into action on the fateful night. By contrast, the white
characters essentially are confined to caricatures.
Shot mostly in the Boston area rather
than in Detroit, where the crew spent about a week, the film certainly
succeeds in providing a visceral, you-are-there feeling of being
engulfed by these sorrowful events. But its insights never elevate to
present a more exalted or acute perspective on what went down 50 summers
ago. What we get instead is a ramped up “j'accuse” that will offer
forceful connections with present-day incidents for those keen to find
them.
8.5/10 for the genre
6/10 overall
Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies.
0 comments:
Post a Comment