True tale pulls no punches
Although Detroit is set in the past, it could easily be a story inspired by recent racially-charged developments in America.
Based on the disturbing true facts of one of the largest race riots in US history, Mark Boal’s script centres around the 1967 Algiers Motel incident, where three young African-American men were murdered.
No stranger to emotionally-charged, based on truth filmmaking (Zero Dark Thirty, The Hurt Locker), Kathryn Bigelow returns to direct her first full-length feature in five years.
Re-teaming with previous collaborator Boal, the pair pull no punches in presenting a traumatic, but essential, recreation of the powerful source material.
Forty-three lives were claimed in the Detroit riots, which lasted for five days, and Bigelow expands on several different aspects of the carnage.
The director painstakingly shoots the Algiers Motel incident in astoundingly tense real-time, taking in both sides of the racial divide.
You’ll do well to find more loathsome characters committed to film this year than Will Poulter (Krauss) and Jack Reynor’s (Demens) shoot first and ask questions later cops – but their presence is essential to telling the full story of what went down on those fateful few days.
Taking time out from battling the Dark Side in Star Wars, John Boyega once again proves that he is a top young talent with skills beyond his years as private security guard Melvin, and part-time Avenger Anthony Mackie (Greene) shows he doesn’t need a pair of mechanical wings to soar.
Bigelow has previous for coaxing awardsbaiting performances from her actors and there’s no weak link among her latest eyecatching ensemble.
While some characters don’t get a lot of screen time, they still make an impression and add something to the hell-on-earth environment Bigelow’s tight camera work shoves right into our faces.
Lighting is dim, sweat runs from foreheads and dust barely has any time to settle; make no mistake, we are taken right into the epicentre of the shocking Motel incident and its consequences here.
At times it’s very disorientating, and you may need to have a lie-down with a wet towel on your head afterwards.
What lets the film down, though – and prevents it from instant classic status – is the rushed handling of the closing court case scenes.
It’s almost as if Bigelow and Boal put everything into filming and writing the conflict and its contributors’ actions and had nothing left when it came to dealing with the aftermath.
Detroit isn’t an easy watch overall, but nor should it be.
And in Bigelow it finds the perfect director to bring its harrowing subject matter into the light for mass audience consumption.