Movie Review: Detroit
Kathryn Bigelow crafts a terrifying kind of “home invasion”

I overheard someone in my screening of Detroit whisper, “This isn’t like Get Out.” It seems a tad strange to compare a crowd-pleasing (if racially focused) horror movie and a historical drama about the Detroit race riots. The comment certainly highlights how the paucity of movies about people of color could allow someone to compare to two tangentially related films.
But it also illuminates the extent that Detroit plays in the same horror movie sandbox as Get Out. The film is based on real events but portrayed with the same immediacy and visceral tension as a home invasion thriller. It is a horror movie, even if it’s not like Get Out or most films in the genre.
In this film, the invaders are not crazed hillbillies, but a cohort of Detroit police and military men dispatched to quell the race riots breaking out across the city.
Detroit opens with a recreation of the botched raid on an illegal nightclub that started the riots. Following a hectic mix of news reel footage and omnipresent camera work, the film settles on the fateful night of July 25, 1967.
Here, Detroit stretches itself a little too thin to introduce the large group of core characters. There’s Melvin Dismukes (John Boyega), a African-American security guard with a peace-keeping attitude. Then we see several racist cops on patrol and out for blood. In addition, we meet Larry Cleveland, an aspiring singer, and two white women staying with a group of black men at the hopping Algiers motel.
It’s jarring that the Algiers motel plays host to a raging party when nearby blocks are filled with the orange glow of burning cars and businesses. But the blithe atmosphere doesn’t last long.
One tenant, Carl, uses a toy starter pistol as part of a speech to the white women on the perils of being a young black male. Following his performance, he decides to fire in the direction of a nearby police installation as a prank. The police interpret the muzzle flare as a sniper and immediately close in on the Algier’s back house.
It’s a sad irony that Carl’s speech — the closest the movie comes to expressing thematic ideas out loud — directly leads to police violence. He can’t even talk about the various threats on his life without inviting them in. The dire consequences of his conversation are the best proof he needed to convince anyone of his plight.
In this film, the invaders are not crazed hillbillies, but a cohort of Detroit police and military men dispatched to quell the race riots breaking out across the city.
The extended sequence that ensues is an excruciating display of police brutality. Bigelow directs the incident as a constantly shifting power struggle between the cops, the National Guard, the terrified suspects, and even the black security guard caught in between.
Before long, the issue of the “missing sniper rifle” takes a back seat to a myriad of other impulses influencing the frustrated policemen. There’s the issue of white women sleeping with black men. There’s their impotence to solve the problem quickly. There’s the underlying desire to murder indiscriminately and get away with it. The creeping dread of Detroit comes from knowing the situation was always doomed and being forced to watch it play out through each beating and deadly interrogation tactic.
To illuminate this shifting balance, editor William Goldenberg finds exquisite moments in the shared glances between prisoners or cops. What the film lacks in complex visual metaphor, it makes up for in pure visual storytelling. Once the dialogue devolves into droning questions and repeated pleas for mercy, the real communication shifts elsewhere. Boyega in particular earns points for his subtle depiction of a man toeing the line between cautiousness and complicity.
Bigelow could have ended the film at the Algiers, and made it simply a recreation of an infamous and confusing night in history. But the third act dives headlong into the trial and into new territory.
At this point, Bigelow elevates the up and coming singer Larry Cleveland as her focal point and potential protagonist. His tragic arc from promising artist to a shell-shocked survivor stands a symbol for the loss of innocence experienced by black men everywhere. Cleveland’s story is the one time the movie shifts from outrage to something more emotional. A little bit of that connection goes a long way.
Beyond that, Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal construct parallels from the bogus trial to our current morass of police brutality disputes. The same arguments we hear today to defend wanton murders were used back in 1967, the heyday of institutional violence. And the officers on trial are made intentionally bland. Their banal hatred of black people and disregard for rules is both an accurate depiction of racism, and an invitation to compare them to a host of bad policemen over the years.
Finally, the film’s tagline reads “It’s time we knew.” Although the film is clear to say that it is a recreation of several accounts and therefore potentially unreliable, there’s an underlying suggestion that the act of depiction inherently carries a deeper truth. The explicit facts do not truly matter when the results are not up to debate: three men died that night; countless other people’s lives were broken forever.
Thus, what separates Detroit from Get Out is the willful lack of catharsis. What you get in exchange for the visceral, bleak story is a rare glimpse at the truth, a validation of what we know occurs daily across the country. Real life doesn’t always have cameras, and they sure didn’t in 1967. At least in this film, the story can be told in a way that cannot be ignored.
Final thoughts: There’s some debate about whether a white director and screenwriter are the most appropriate people to make a film of this subject matter. Furthermore, it’s sadly typical for prestige films about the black experience to cover tragedies like slavery or urban poverty. In my opinion, the justifying factor for Detroit is that it doesn’t just deliver tragedy and go for easy empathy points; it engenders a burning sense of rage. Bigelow is not the only person capable of telling this story, but she’s the best person to tell it in this unique way.
8.5/10
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