Phillip Ellis
Star –My Rating ***
Genre – Drama
Run Time – 2 Hr 23 Mins
Certificate – 18
Country – U.S.A.
Awards – 5 Wins & 18 Nominations
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So Detroit, a film by Oscar winning director Kathryn Bigelow of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty fame. I really didn’t like The Hurt Locker and amazed it got all those Oscars. It just seemed to be The Academy being politically correct again to find the first female director Oscar winner. It’s a silly bombastic war film with silly performances. Zero Dark Thirty, about the killing of Osama Bin Laden, is much better.
Detroit is a different kind of American war film between black and white and her version of the true story of the infamous racist killings of three young black men in a hotel during the Detroit race riots of the 1960s. She was given a surprisingly average budget of $37m to make her movie but spent it well on a young talent cast to humanize both black and white protagonists. Even more surprisingly it did just $24m back. The public still like these movies looking at Americas racist past, Green book winning Best Picture only last month, but not so much this one.
===Plot===
The riots are raging in Detroit and the 95% white police force losing control. Five young musician black kids known as The Dramatics are about to take the big stage for their Motown singing debut, very talented and on the verge of record contracts. But the gig is canceled by order of the police as a curfew is introduced across the city and their big chance snatched away for now.
On the way home the riots intensify and the bus bricked, two of The Dramatics fleeing to a nearby motel away from the trouble, where the boys meet two pretty white girls, Ann Hysell (Hannah Murray ) and Karen Malloy (Kaitlyn Dever), who invite them to another apartment to drink and smoke with some other black guys.
At some point in the evening the army is called into the city to quell the violence, fresh from Vietnam. The party gets going and in the film it’s suggested an imitation firearm is fired from their room at the soldiers and cops across the way in a drunken haze, resulting in real return fire at their room. The cops and soldiers round them up and one of the boys shot dead in the back in the process by a trigger happy white cop, Officer Krauss (Will Poulter), who puts all the kids up against the wall to find out who the shooter was from the apartment. Their interrogations are pretty brutal and even the army are not happy with what they are seeing in the house as the tension rises, the other cops not too keen on the blacks folks either. A black security guard Melvin Dismukes (John Boyega) protecting a store across the road seems to be their only friend and keeping them alive.
===Results===
Whichever way you look at this film it was a flop at the box office. But it’s still a decent well made movie that for people who don’t know the story there is enough here to be shocked and angry about. But there is a problem. Just how innocent were all those involved? The cops were racist and the army were trigger happy but also a strong subversive black underbelly that were fighting back against the law anyway they could back then. In the film it says there was no real gun and the kids are shown as terrified youngsters suffering police brutality. Even the white racist cops are almost palatable. For me the film has been made for a guilty white American middle-class audience still apologizing for Americas past, the type of people who got Obama over the line. I’m not sure how much of its true and some of the main protagonist character have had their names changed for legal reasons as they clearly don’t agree with his they were portrayed back then but this is now the events as I understand them.
Acting is good and Agee Smith a real talent with an amazing singing voice. The DVD extras are nice and some of the black guys involved back then are alive today and recounted their experiences of that time and Agee meets the real Larry Reed, still singing today in The Dramatics. Cleary these guys went through hell back then but you kind of needed to know was armed black resistance involved and were cops shot at? Saying that it was done in a way we got enough of the facts of the event and the cast did the rest. Interesting how they chose young British talent in John ‘Star Wars’ Boyega and Will Poulter to front the film as the main good and bad protagonists.
It’s hard to put your finger on why this film tanked. It clearly didn’t draw a black audience or white working class one. Critics were kind about it so no their fault. You decide.
===RATINGS===
Imdb.com – 7.4/10.0 (39,067 votes)
Rottentomatos.com – 83% critic’s approval
Metacritic.com – 77% critic’s approval
===Trailer===
