Bigelow explores horrific history in ‘Detroit’

There is no nice or pretty way to tell a story about the systemic oppression and mistreatment of black people in the United States. It’s fitting then that Kathryn Bigelow’s “Detroit ,” an account of the murders of three unarmed black men that took place in the Algiers Motel in late July 1967, is neither — it is an all-out assault on your senses and soul.

It’s hard to overstate just how visceral and harrowing an experience it is. “Detroit” is a well-made and evocative film that is also numbingly brutal with little to no reprieve. And while it might be the only true way to tell this story, it’s also one that is not going to be for everyone. The stomach-churning horror begins immediately and does not let up for 2 hours and 23 minutes.

To set the stage for the Algiers Motel, Bigelow begins by speeding through the history of black people in United States with animated acrylics and pounding music — emancipation, the great migration, white flight and the racist zoning practices that led to the overcrowding of black residents in urban pockets. Tensions have already reached a tipping point, and then in the summer of 1967, Detroit police bust an afterhours club in what would become the inciting inci- dent for the riots.

Bigelow collaborated again with screenwriter Mark Boal on “Detroit,” which is perfectly evocative of this specific time and place, but the lacking perspective and illumination that one might hope a 50-year-old event would warrant. Perhaps they wanted to leave conclusions and interpreting to the audience.

There is some nuance — in the National Guard officer who is horrified by the situation and the local security officer (John Boyega) who only wanted to ease tensions — but not nearly as much as Bigelow and Boal have previously achieved in “Zero Dark Thirty” and “The Hurt Locker.”

Also very little insight is given to the victims’ lives outside of this event. Maybe that’s not the point, though. Maybe anger is all you’re supposed to feel when you step outside the theater. Maybe not feeling satisfied with “Detroit” is the point.

This was America, you think. This is still America. And the movies can’t offer a resolution that history hasn’t.

“Detroit,” an Annapurna Pictures release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for “strong violence and pervasive language.” Running time: 143 minutes. Three stars out of four.

FRANCOIS DUHAMEL — ANNAPURNA PICTURES VIA AP This image released by Annapurna Pictures shows a scene from “Detroit.”