Review – Detroit

After taking a five year break after the sensational Zero Dark Thirty (2012), director Kathryn Bigelow is back and better than ever with Detroit.  This is an absolute knockout.  A hot-blooded, intense, gut-wrenching, socially relevant masterpiece about one of America’s darkest hidden secrets.

Detroit takes us to July of 1967, where race riots are raging in the streets of Detroit, Michigan, throwing the city into complete chaos.  On one fateful night, an incident between the Detroit police and the several African Americans takes place at a small hotel, causing a heinous crime to take place.

Bigelow’s direction and mastery behind the camera is at a new level here.  Much like The Hurt Locker (2009) and Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Bigelow throws us right into the chaos, using a very loose, handheld camera to make us feel the anxiety and intensity of what is happening.  You feel the fear in these men.  You feel the hate of the police.  You feel the heat within the small hotel hallway and you feel every hit and feel every ounce of blood.  The movie cuts and moves so fast, you feel confusion of these young men and try to understand why the things that are happening are happening.  You never once know what is going to happen and Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal really capture the suspense and fear of the moment and the time and the hate of setting.  It is masterful work from both Bigelow and Boal.

Detroit boasts one of the best ensembles of 2017.  Bigelow has brought together a cast of up-and-comers, as well as seasoned veterans and they are all great.  Actors like Jason Mitchell, Anthony Mackie, and John Krazinski light up the screen in the few scenes they are on, and new kids like Will Poulter, Jacob Latimore, Ben O’Toole, Algee Smith, and Jack Reynor own their performances, completely embodying the men they are playing.  Even smaller performances, like the one from Gbenga Akinnagbe, are filled with immense power and emotion.  Of this great ensemble, Poulter ,Smith, and Akinnagbe are the true standouts.  Poulter has come a long way since being the weird kid from We’re the Millers (2013) and shows his range playing a naive, confused, angry cop.  Algee is the driving emotional force in the movie and gives a performance that pulls at the heart strings.  And Akinnagbe, though only in the movie for a couple scenes, crushes it, giving a powerful, heartbreaking performance as the father of one of the boys in the hotel.  I would be very disappointed if at least one of these great performances did not get awards love at the end of the year.

The scariest part about Detroit is how real and relevant it feels.  The movie is set at the height of The Civil Rights movement in 1967, where race relations were at an absolute worst in the United States and cops and African Americans were at each others throats.  Now, 50 years later in 2017, we are still having these problems with police brutality and African Americans revolting.  Like The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, Bigelow shows us a dark side of America.  She showed us how war is a drug in The Hurt Locker, and the obsession of revenge in Zero Dark Thirty and here, she shows us how much we haven’t changed as a country and that the issues of the past still haunt us and affects us to this day.  This is a shattered reflection of modern America and as important of a film as we will get in 2017.

Did you see Detroit?  What did you think?  Comment below or hit me up on Twitter and Instagram, @kevflix, or on Facebook by searching Kevflix.