Review: Detroit

Perhaps one of the most unnerving things about Detroit, Kathryn Bigelow's docudrama about the 1967 Detroit riots and, specifically, the Algiers Motel incident, is its timeliness. With police brutality cases such as Philando Castle's, the Ferguson protests and riots, and the even more recent events in Charlottesville still fresh in one's memory, this is a film that reminds audiences, with blunt brutality, that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, who also collaborated with the director on The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, sketch a quick historical context of the situation. In Detroit, blacks were restricted to a few overcrowded neighbourhoods which were patrolled by a mostly white police force. Though the state's auto industry provided job opportunities for people of colour, blacks still had to contend with high risk but low-paying jobs, poor education, and racial discrimination which took the form of police brutality and random raids. As one character later notes, to be black is to instantly be a target: "When you're black, it's almost like having a gun pointed to your face."

It's no wonder that things go from bad to considerably worse on July 23, 1967 when police raid an after-hours bar in the 12th Street office of the United Community League for Civic Action where two locals were being feted for returning from the Vietnam War. Arrests are made, crowds begin to gather, tensions are at a boiling point. Then a bottle is thrown and it all kicks off. Within 48 hours, the city has disintegrated into a war zone. Looting and destruction are rampant despite the pleas of a local black assemblyman not to "mess up your own neighbourhood." Federal troops have been called in, so have the National Guard to help protect state and local police. "It's hard to believe that this could happen in America," one news report remarks. It may be hard to believe, but it's not difficult to understand especially once the film enters its most potent and harrowing section: the depiction of the Algiers Motel incident.

The Algiers Motel, frequented by hookers and drug dealers, also served as refuge for anyone looking to escape from the mayhem that was still erupting on the streets of Detroit. On that fateful night of July 25th, the third night of rioting, the motel's guests included Vietnam veteran Robert Greene (Anthony Mackie), doo-wop singers Cleveland Larry Brown (Algee Smith) and Fred Temple (Jacob Latimore), teenage girls Julie Ann (Hannah Murray) and Karen (Kaitlyn Dever) from Ohio who might be prostitutes, a boy named Aubrey Pollard (Nathan Davis Jr.), and 17-year-old Carl Cooper (Jason Mitchell), whose foolish decision to fire his toy starter pistol out the window at the National Guards outside results in the already jumpy police force going into overdrive. Leading the overzealous cops is Philip Krauss (Will Poulter, delivering a remarkable portrayal of power fuelled by ignorance and hatred), earlier seen shooting an unarmed looter in the back, who terrorises the guests into telling him who shot at the troops and where the gun is.

In many respects, this middle section could have been the entire film, so powerful a portrait it is of how ugly and damn near impossible it is to fight against those in power. Even when you submit and stay silent in order to survive, as black security guard Melvin Dismukes (John Boyega) does, it's no guarantee. They will still bully and denigrate you. One of the most searing moments of the film is when Fred is told by Krauss that he can leave if he swears to keep silent about Aubrey's death. Fred's refusal is not even a deliberate act of bravery, just a simple acknowledgement that a man is lying dead on the floor, and Krauss shoots him dead for not cooperating in the cover-up.

Detroit is by no means a perfect film, nor is it necessarily an excellent one, but it is an important viewing experience in this day and age where the promise of change may be a little less of an illusion than it was 50 years ago, but still an illusion nonetheless.

Detroit

Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow

Written by: Mark Boal

Starring: John Boyega, Anthony Mackie, Will Poulter, Algee Smith, Jacob Latimore, Jack Reynor, John Krasinksi, Kaitlyn Dever, Jason Mitchell, Hannah Murray, Nathan Davis Jr.