Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow
Starring: John Boyega, Anthony Mackie, Algee Smith, Will Poulter, Jacob Latimore, Hannah Murray, Kaitlyn Dever
Reflecting on Kathryn Bigelow's two most recent films (The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty) and now Detroit, I marvel at their technical superiority and strong acting, but yet I'm still held outside. Her movies know how they are supposed to look and spare no expense in looking right, but I find I'm not all in emotionally. The subject matter of Detroit has easy-to-connect parallels to today's society, in which racism, prejudice, and police brutality (and sometimes even killing) still exist to alarming degrees. Stories of rioting have been in the news for decades. The stories of these ills grab headlines. People protest, talking heads appear on talk shows, and columnists express their outrage, but the needle doesn't move substantially. How do I know? This nation elected a President based on a campaign built largely on prejudice, xenophobia, and fear. In 1967 Detroit, things weren't much different.
It is difficult to watch Detroit and not explore your own feelings on these subjects. I can't imagine Bigelow and frequent collaborator, screenwriter Mark Boal, made the film without understanding how relevant its themes are today. The connections are direct and intentional, which are part of the film's strengths. The police offers and National Guardsmen in Detroit clearly trample the civil rights of the suspects they detain on the night of July 25, 1967. We see how the race riots which started on the early morning of July 23 after an illegal speakeasy was busted begin. There is massive looting and destruction of property. The national guard was brought in to assist the weary police. Detroit attempts to create an atmosphere with a prologue depicting the massive migration of blacks to the North, followed by the migration of whites to the suburbs, which led to marginalization of blacks in the urban areas since jobs and money fled to the suburbs too. The bust of the speakeasy appears to be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
Detroit shows us how such tensions can cause the worst in people. The rioting and looting are wrong, as are the police officers who shoot people running away from a crime scene in the back, plant evidence, try to keep their lies straight, and murder and terrorize other suspects they interrogate. The suspects detained at the Algiers Hotel after police and National Guardsmen descended on it after a black man fires a starter pistol (but is mistaken to be a sniper) to scare police are indeed harassed, beaten, and in three cases, murdered. Others witness the crimes but do nothing to stop them. One of them is security guard Melvin Dismukes (Boyega), who tries to act as an intermediary between the suspects and cops in hopes that cooler heads prevail. As he later goes on trial himself, it is apparent Dismukes should have not tried to be a hero and stayed away.
The three white police officers who do the terrorizing are young, clean-shaven, and seriously warped by prejudice. Led by Officer Phillip Krauss (Poulter-in a chilling performance), the men abuse their power in an attempt to determine if the suspect Krauss shot in the back and planted a knife on was indeed the man a sniper. (He wasn't). The suspects include two young white girls (Murray and Dever), who were discovered by the police in another room with a black army veteran (Mackie) as they rounded up the hotel denizens. The idea of two white girls hanging out with a black man, even a Vietnam veteran with an honorable discharge, incenses the three officers to the point of rabid anger. The girls did not commit any crime, nor did the veteran, but in the officer's minds the girls betrayed their race because, in their warped minds, their visit to the room had to be sexual in nature.
The scenes involving Krauss' illegal detention of the suspects are wound up, but not as tensely as one would expect. They are shown, but yet we don't feel much about them except for some muted outrage. Is it possible, with round-the-clock media coverage of police shootings and White House scandal, that I am on outrage overload? Possibly. I would recommend seeing Detroit as a way to test your own feelings on the societal ills presented here. It inspires thought, but doesn't quite cross the line into true greatness. I am not certain if it is Bigelow or me that doesn't allow that to happen.
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