Gritty ‘Detroit’ paints savage lawlessness
Viewers left to wonder: Who are the criminals?
It’s been 50 years since the Detroit riots, but healing is hard to come by. Social and legal equality are at the forefront of
Detroit ( out of four; rated R; now showing in select cities, including New York, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles, in theaters nationwide Friday), the latest film from Kathryn Bigelow ( The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty). For Detroit, the director relies on a mostly unknown cast (save for Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ John Boyega and Avengers: Age of Ultron’s Anthony Mackie) to tell the homegrown horror story of what happened at the Algiers Motel as riots choked Detroit in 1967.
Police stormed the Algiers and viciously interrogated a group of young black guests and two white girls, ultimately killing three unarmed teens.
In Zero Dark Thirty, Bigelow juxtaposed Jessica Chastain’s nausea with the U.S. military’s illegal torture techniques. In De
troit, as guests are bloodied in a motel hallway lineup, there’s no such counterbalance, creating a prolonged exercise in unchecked power. It’s a stunning, if devastatingly effective, achievement.
Political and civil tensions are set to a boil in the movie’s opening scene, when police raid an unauthorized African-American club. An angry crowd forms, and Molotov cocktails begin to fly.
Detroit seamlessly mixes real news footage with scripted scenes. The audience meets the central players, beginning with racist cop Philip Krauss (Will Poulter), who shrugs when he’s disciplined for gunning down a black man running away with two bags of groceries. It’s impossible to take in the scene without seeing Trayvon Martin’s face. Or Michael Brown’s. Or Philando Castile’s.
As the city burns and tanks roll in, security guard Melvin Dismukes (Boyega) prepares for the night’s looting. Across town, aspiring Motown singer Larry Reed (Algee Smith) and friend Fred Temple (Jacob Latimore) head to the Algiers after a gig is canceled.
It’s here where Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal largely rely on first-person accounts and found documents about what transpired in the Algiers, with a bit of creative license.
From a hotel room, prankster Carl Cooper (Jason Mitchell) shoots a blank from a starter pistol toward police staking out a street nearby. A riot squad and the National Guard descend on the tiny motel. The next 40 minutes turn the Algiers into a lawless house of horrors. Led by the unhinged Krauss, officers brutalize guests and enact a ruthless “death game,” pretending to shoot guests in closed-off rooms to force others to talk. Cops drop pocket knives by the hands of the dead, the implication clear.
Detroit is likely destined for the Oscar race, where Smith and Poulter could go head-to-head for best supporting actor. The film’s unflinching gaze on a lawless night will likely be politicized, but calling Detroit anti-police misses the mark. The question Detroit begs is, in a democratic nation, to whom does the law apply?