Description: Just one person's collection of thoughts, musings, criticisms, and observations from appreciating all things cinematic.
Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit has scenes and sequences that would potentially build to a powerful film about the disturbing incident of police brutality at the Algiers Motel on the night of July 25-26, 1967. The central sequence that depicts this event is certainly as harrowing and unsettling as it could possibly be and cries out for justice for the victims who died at this event. The problem with the movie is that the depiction of the background surrounding the pivotal event is confused and frustrating.
About that central sequence that lasts about an hour, director Bigelow and writer Mark Boal (who previously collaborated on two previous brilliant fact-based films, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty ) depict the incident as harshly and unsparingly as possible. This section is punishingly claustrophobic as we see the white cops, fueled by blatant racism, abuse their authority and terrorize the primarily black residents in the motel looking for a sniper’s rifle that was not there (it was actually a starte
This is an urgent story that is still sadly relevant today and, with the right focus and clear structure, would have made a singularly impactful film. The film’s central problem, however, is that, in its portrayal of the 1967 Detroit riots in the background, it does not lend the riots the gravity it deserves as a whole. I believe the filmmakers will argue that the first third of the movie leads up to the central Algiers motel incident to make it stand in for the systemic issue of racism and police brutali