Detroit (15)
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