Detroit (2017, directed by Kathryn Bigelow. U.S.A., English, Color, 143 minutes) The most important thing about a society steeped in the arts and culture is the ability to observe our own behavior. Every form of media can be used to deliver a message about who we are, or who we have been, as a civilized group of people. In the history of American cinema we have seen film used to glorify the KKK ("The Birth of a Nation") and even excoriate a presidency ("Fahrenheit 9/11"). Needless to say, it's one of the most powerful and controversial mediums in the world for the stories it tells. "Detroit" is a movie presented as a contemporary art piece that exploits extremely raw emotions of modern events to create a telling of a previous heinous event in our history. The film is as empty, shallow and void of feeling as the society we live in.
The Oscar-winning duo of director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal return for a third consecutive outing with "Detroit", a docudrama account of the 1967 Detroit riots, most notably the Algiers Motel Incident that left three black men dead after hours of alleged forced interrogation. In their first movie together away from the sandswept war zones of the Middle East, the battleground streets of Detroit take center stage as we view two types of American enemies go at it: black people and the police. Each is the antagonist to the other and there's no logical way to prove that either one is right in their own convictions in this movie. Without fail, this is Bigelow and Boal's first horrendous pairing together. Killing terrorists in their first two movies was a more cathartic experience because audiences had something to cheer for in our post-9/11 wave of patriotism. Now, we're faced with fighting ourselves.
Much of "Detroit" is centered around the persons involved in the Algiers Motel Incident, where it appears that torture porn has been given an art house facelift. Characters - and I use that term liberally - are lined up against a wall as police interrogate them about who shot a gun that drew initial law enforcement response to the motel. It's a never-ending barrage of deceit and epithet-slinging so unnerving and led by actor Will Poulter, whose performance is so hokey and unconvincing that it downgrades the film to a work similar to a '70s snuff film, not to mention his permanently arched eyebrows, à la Divine in "Pink Flamingos," were incredibly distracting though it gave his babyface a maniacal look. At least Divine was a fully realized character of debauchery and unabashedly secure in herself. Poulter's character is a horrendous caricature based on the decades of racism instilled in law enforcement and unleashed on blacks. He's a simple, one-dimensional boy. I'm sure the guards in the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment were more convincing in their roles, and they didn't have a script to work from.
The underlying problem with "Detroit" is that it exacerbates the most simple attitudes and feelings of people, much like the short-tempered exchanges between people in "Crash". Nigger, cracker and Uncle Tom are the most common phrases thrown around among characters, not to mention the uncomfortably forced, racially-fueled banter between whites and blacks in even less "hostile" situations. There is nothing compelling about what is being told here as evident by the animated opening that details the population patterns of blacks after WWI and all the way through the closing title cards that explain the characters' fates. The in-between is filled with moments of creative license and fiction, as made clear by a disclaimer, most notably during the Algiers Motel sequence.
On the Algiers Motel incident Bigelow said in a July 16 interview on "CBS Sunday Morning" the three black men killed there were "simply caught in the wrong place at the wrong time." According to she and Boal's account, it was one of the murdered men who fired shots out of a window at the Algiers that led to law enforcement to raid the motel. Bigelow cannot say "wrong place, wrong time" when her film makes one of the men a suspect. I think they took a lot of free reign for that segment as a way to put fuel on the fire on an already painful message that white police officers will always get away with murdering black people. Accounts are reportedly unclear about what happened at the Algiers, but Bigelow and Boal make up a scenario that will correlate most strongly with people who are tired of police brutality against blacks.
Why would people want to see this movie? We've seen on the news countless times over the years about the killing of black males by white officers and the subsequent riots and marches that proceed it. "Detroit" shamelessly exhibits these events in its fictional take on the '67 riots, and it adds nothing new to any discussion about society, past or present. In fact, the 15 minutes or so of film that shows rioting and mass looting is so bland and obscure that you could have seen the same thing on any recent nightly news broadcast.
In hindsight, the film didn't have to be deep or compelling at all. The story is geared toward people who are tired of negative police interactions among citizens. It can be as simple-minded and as mean-spirited as it wants because that's what those audiences want to see: unfiltered, shameless displays of behavior between the man and minorities.
"Detroit" seethes with hate: Hate for each other; hate for ourselves; hate for humanity; and hatred of life. Nothing good comes out of watching this film, but it's sure to give social advocates an outlet to bereave over injustices but without any clear message of hope that we can be a unified, loving world. This is not the type of film this country needs now. We need to focus on how we can all be better citizens instead of reminded time and again how awful we are to each other.
Rating: F
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