Detroit (2017)

Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow | 143 minutes | crime, drama, history, thriller | Actors: John Boyega, Will Poulter, Algee Smith, Jacob Latimore, Jason Mitchell, Hannah Murray, Jack Reynor, Kaitlyn Dever, Ben O’Toole, John Krasinski, Anthony Mackie, Nathan Davis Jr., Petyon ‘Alex’ Smith, Malcolm David Kelley, Joseph David-Jones, Laz Alonso, Ephraim Sykes, Leon Thomas III, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Chris Chalk, Jeremy Strong

The summer of 1967 was a long and hot one in the US. And that has nothing to do with the temperature. ‘The Long Hot Summer of 1967’ refers to the sultry atmosphere between white and black, which led to no fewer than 159 race riots in just four months. In cities such as Cincinatti, Boston, Tampa, Newark, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Atlanta and Buffalo, the situation was spiraling out of control. Nowhere, however, was it as bad as in Detroit, where the unrest lasted for five days and where eyewitnesses spoke of ‘hell on earth’. Veterans who had just returned from Vietnam claimed it wasn’t as bad even there as it was in their hometown. When the troops began to withdraw on July 27, 1967, the damage could be assessed: as many as 43 people were killed (including a girl just four years old), nearly 1,200 were injured and more than 7,200 were arrested. . More than 2,500 shops were looted and destroyed or set on fire, 388 families were suddenly homeless and 412 buildings were damaged to the point of being demolished. The economic damage was estimated between 40 and 45 million dollars. Numbers to dazzle. The violence in Detroit also fueled riots in other cities – in the state of Michigan and beyond.

Kathryn Bigelow, the first and as yet only female director to win an Academy Award for Best Director (for the 2008 war thriller ‘The Hurt Locker’), was caught up in the 1967 race riots—and recent unrest in cities like Ferguson and New York City through police brutality against black youth – inspiration for her historical crime drama ‘Detroit’ (2017). As with ‘The Hurt Locker’ and ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ (2012), she works with screenwriter Mark Boal, who like her likes to approach things with almost documentary realism. We fall into the film as the police storm an illegal nightclub (called a ‘blind pig’) on 12th Street, where a party has just started to welcome two returned Vietnam veterans home. While the nightclub-goers are arrested, unrest arises in the street. People call out to the officers, throw stones at them and not much later windows of shops are smashed and a fire is set on fire. The situation grows grim and the governor of the state of Michigan calls in the National Guard and paratroopers to help restore order. Larry Reed (Algee Smith) is a young, promising singer who is about to debut in the Motown Revue at the Fox Theater in Detroit with his R’nB group The Dramatics. Soon it will be their turn, but during the performance of Martha Reeves and The Vandella’s, everyone is summoned to leave the building and quickly go home because of the riots in the street. A disappointed Reed rushes off with his best friend Fred Temple (Jacob Latimore) and seeks shelter at the nearby Algiers Motel.

There they meet Julie and Karen (Hannah Murray and Kaitlyn Dever), two white girls from Ohio who introduce them to their friends Carl Cooper (Jason Mitchell) and Aubrey Pollard (Nathan Davis Jr.). The men stir each other up a bit and Carl decides to play a joke with a starter pistol. In no time at all, the police are on the doorstep of the Algiers Motel, looking for an alleged sniper. Agent Philip Krauss (Will Poulter) is one of the inflexible kind, who has shown before that he does not shy away from using force. He also knows how to drag his secondaries Demens (Jack Reynor) and Flynn (Ben O’Toole) into his sadistic game. Melvin Dismukes (John Boyega), a black security guard hired to protect a store from looters, discovers something is amiss at the Algiers Motel and decides to investigate.

‘Detroit’ is divided into three parts; in the first part we are taken back to the 12th Street of 1967. The atmosphere and tone are set, characters are introduced and thanks to the realistic, raw style that Bigelow uses, you have the feeling that you are there yourself. The middle part, by far the largest part of the film, revolves around the terrible events at the Algiers Motel. Here is ‘Detroit’ at its best: oppressive, confrontational, nerve-wracking. Looking away is not possible. You can almost smell the fear sweat of the victims, it all becomes so tangible. Bigelow and Boal chose to run the narration time and the narration time in parallel, which works out great. After that exciting middle part, however, they make a less sensible choice by letting the film end with a bloodless trial and an equally poorly elaborated aftermath. This final is by no means satisfactory. It is as if a choice has been made to merely present the facts, without trying to interpret the events. Because ‘Detroit’ is definitely a captivating film, and especially the middle part grabs you by the throat and shakes you up. But as to the hows and whys, Bigelow and Boal leave us in the dark.

Why did things get so out of hand in Detroit in 1967? How did it come to this? Those are questions you want to see answered. The characters could have been more layered too; certainly the policeman Philip Krauss, well played by Will Poulter, is portrayed rather one-sidedly. What are his motives? And so few characters have so many dimensions that they actually become likable; the only one who comes close is the dutiful guard Melvin Dismukes, who somehow we can understand why he doesn’t intervene at the Algiers Motel. The acting, by the way, is fine overall. In smaller roles we also see John Krasinski (‘The Office US’), Gbenga Akkinagbe (‘The Wire’) and Anthony Mackie (‘The Hurt Locker’). ‘Detroit’ probably won’t land Kathryn Bigelow a second Oscar. With precision she relives the events of 1967 in ‘Motor City’ Detroit; race riots that changed and scarred the city forever. Moreover, she knows how to glue us to the screen, especially in the brooding and nerve-racking middle part. But no matter how meticulously she relives history, she leaves us with too many questions. In the context of #BlackLivesMatter and related movements, we are diligently looking for explanations. And unfortunately ‘Detroit’ doesn’t give us that.