Detroit (2017, Kathryn Bigelow) Movie

A police raid in Detroit in 1967 results in one of the largest citizen uprisings in the United States' history.

Trailer tomorrow, here is a teaser:

 

I got to work on this film last year and it was a great experience all around. Nice to finally have a title.

 

I don't know the true life story but it looks good.

 

Surprised this is coming out in August and not awards season given her last two

 

It definitely is surprising. Also, if this year sees another repeat of last year's "Pack everything into December" philosophy, this could get lost in the shuffle even if it turns out to be great.

 

Looks pretty good. Dig the cast.

 

Bigelow & Boyega. Yep, I'm in. Trailer looked great too.

 

Early reviews are very positive

 

So this movie succeeded in pissing me off. Pretty damn engrossing, too

 

Detroit Movie Review & Film Summary (2017) | Roger Ebert

 

It is so weird that critics write for a website named rogerebert.com. I thought I had missed something for a second.

 

Interested to see how this goes, especially now that the early reviews are so positive. I didn't really enjoy Zero Dark Thirty much outside of the Pakistan scene so I'm hoping this is better. And I'm a fan of John Boyega and Anthony Mackie as well.

 

This was a brutal experience.

 

I have a lot of thoughts about this. Born and raised in Detroit and the Detroit area we've been inundated with '67 Riot media the last few months as we come upon the 50th anniversary, including a recent documentary, 12th and Clairmount. Katheryn Bigelow is one of the most skilled directors around at crafting harrowing and gut-wrenching suspense, Dunkirk absolutely pales in comparison to Detroit in terms of dramatized true events told as suspense/thriller cinema. I never read reviews before I see a film, but Angelica Jade Bastien's review, linked above, piqued my interest and, having seen the film, she's not wrong about the ways in which Detroit lacks. Aside from an animated introduction granting a very, very, very brief history of racial migration in the United States and Detroit, the fact that this film is set in Detroit, titled after the city, and about real events that defined and changed the city, doesn't come through strongly at all. The actual city of Detroit is secondary to the admittedly incredibly made thriller/horror sequences within the Algiers Motel. Police brutalize black people all over the country, segregation existed and exists all over the country, but why it reached the point it did in Detroit, and what the riots and Algiers Motel incident really meant to the cities transformation is completely left out of this movie. Movies about police brutality and riots like Do the Right Thing and Fruitvale Station do feel markedly different than Detroit. For all the ways in which it is stunningly effective, it doesn't have the resonance that they have, the understanding of community that comes with a cities' black population, particularly the ways in which black women are not only active participants in the narratives, but the meaningful ways in which they shape the narratives. I will not deny the ways in which this film is exceptionally made and shot and directed. I will not deny the moments that land, the tangible fury and despair it can inspire. But as a whole it doesn't end up attempting to speak to an audience not far removed from rioting in Ferguson and Baltimore, an audience exposed to the murder of black men and women at the hands of police more than ever before. It's fascinated with the fact that it happened and the psyches of the individual people involved, and Bigelow and Mark Boal have been very good at crafting psychologically interesting and viscerally thrilling movies about true events (or telling fictional stories in real-life, politically charged settings), but it doesn't meaningfully explore how deep these scars truly cut in a community. Detroit is as tragic an example of contemporary segregation and gentrification as there is, and the riots played a massive role in that. To see them glossed over as the city experiences its "comeback" hurts, and to see contemporary Detroit ignored in a story about those riots hurts too.

 

Also doesn't help that they only spent about three days total filming in Detroit (and even then it was in Hamtramck mostly). The rest of the movie was shot in Boston. Cheaper incentives. Friggin Rick Snyder.

 

Bigelow is definitely very technically skilled
I liked how they included Motown as context to the time period, hard to believe this was a month or so removed from Woodstock
my main complaint is all the characters felt very anonymous
Boyega was channeling Denzel right?
Will Poulter's eyebrows were so scary in this, like even if he had wound up playing Pennywise it would be less scary
I can't believe Krasinski was the lawyer, I think any other actor would be more believable

 

So nice to see Malcolm David Kelley and Hannah Murray in such a big movie. This and Three Billboards have the best ensemble performances of the year, definitely

 

Watching this now. Man this is fuckin brutal. Making me so angry and kind of sick