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First reviews for Kathryn Bigelow's Detroit

D

Dan

No longer boycotting the Wolfenstein franchise
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/detroit-2017
Watching "Detroit," the latest film directed by Kathryn Bigelow and penned by Mark Boal, I hit a breaking point I didn’t realize I had. I was disturbed so deeply by what I witnessed that I left the theater in tears.

It wasn’t the relentless violence inflicted upon black bodies or the fiery devastation of the riots ripping apart Detroit but the emptiness behind these moments that got under my skin. Watching “Detroit” I realized that I’m not interested in white perceptions of black pain. White filmmakers, of course, have every right to make stories that highlight the real and imagined histories of racism and police brutality that pointedly affect Black America. There are, of course, a litany of films by white filmmakers about subject matter unique to the black experience that I find moving—“The Color Purple” comes to mind. But Steven Spielberg’s film was based on a novel by Alice Walker and produced by Quincy Jones. “Detroit” was directed, written, produced, shot, and edited by white creatives who do not understand the weight of the images they hone in on with an unflinching gaze.

“Detroit” is ultimately a confused film that has an ugliness reflected in its visual craft and narrative. Bigelow is adept at making the sharp crack of an officer’s gun against a black man’s face feel impactful but doesn’t understand the meaning of the emotional scars left behind or how they echo through American history. “Detroit” is a hollow spectacle, displaying rank racism and countless deaths that has nothing to say about race, the justice system, police brutality, or the city that gives it its title.
Click to expand...
While John Boyega has been top-billed for his performance as Melvin Dismukes, a security guard who stumbles into aiding the blatantly racist cops and armed forces that realize the civil rights violations happening but do nothing to stop it, he’s too passive a character to leave much of an impression. In standing by his position as an authority figure and helping these white cops, Melvin becomes complicit in their horror. Boyega is a charismatic actor, but he gives a flat performance, although it’s the script that’s more of a problem. Mark Boal skirts around the issue of Melvin’s complicity, leaving an interesting story on the table. The standout from the cast proves to be Algee Smith, who grants his character a soulfulness and yearning that grows more heartbreaking as the film continues, but even his performance is often undercut by directorial choices.

There are plenty of examples of racism in the film, but it's William Poulter’s performance as Philip Krauss, a cop who proves to be a ringleader to the horrors that occur at the Algiers Motel, that’s the most sickening. Krauss is quick to violence, virulently racist, and immensely cunning. He delights in beating the black men who realize he’s abusing his power but can do nothing to stop him even as dead bodies pile up. Bigelow doesn’t flinch from depicting Krauss’ horror, but she also doesn’t thoroughly indict him or the systems that allow men like him to survive.
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The soullessness of the film only snapped into focus for me near the very end when one of the survivors, Larry, is shown singing at church. The church is important to the black community both as an emblem of hope and resistance. But this scene is shot exactly like the most disturbing moments at Algiers Motel. The camera moves much like a boxer. It bobs and weaves staying perpetually in motion. There is an anxious energy and bluntness that feels out of place as Larry sings in front of the black congregation.
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This seemed like a good review looking under the surface of the film's claim of self-importance.
 
B

Bad_Boy

time to take my meds
I cant wait.

Unfortunately they wont release it here in south korea. So.... I'll have to wait a long time.
 
T

TheSkullPrince

Member
Me and and some friends already made plans to go see this next week, glad it's getting some pretty good early reviews.

And Boyega is quickly becoming one of my favorite current actors. Hope he slays in Pacific Rim 2.
 
M.W.

M.W.

Member
Looks good, but I wasn't impressed by The Hurt Locker or Zero Dark Thirty.

Bigelow's best is still Point Break
 
W

WedgeX

Banned
The Detroit Free Press is chronically the 50th Anniversary of the riot, including stories from people in the city at the time.

Riot or rebellion? The debate on what to call Detroit '67

He helped start 1967 Detroit riot, now his son struggles with the legacy

Those killed during the riot:
43 fatal victims of the Detroit riot of 1967

Stories from Detroiters:

'The entire city smelled like smoke,' merchant's son recalls
Doctor 'never saw anything in the Air Force' like that week of riot
Former cop says 1967 riot killed Detroit: 'It'll never come back'
Black lawyer felt obligation to do more than stay home
Detroit NAACP head Rev. Anthony: Police abuse led to 1967 riot
Son of Mayor Jerome Cavanagh believes riot killed dad
1966 student walkout at Northern a sign of things to come
'The shotguns were loaded,' rookie cop recalls
Stunned teen saw riot unfold outside her bedroom window
'It wasn't supposed to happen here'
Black working class was fed up, ready to organize
'That's not a fire, that's something else': Detroit firefighter's daughter tells tale of riot
The officer who led the raid on the blind pig that ignited the riot
 
Moff

Moff

Member
Never heard of this
trailer looks very good
Bigelow usually delivers and I'm excited to see Boyega in a serious role, he was do damn likeable in TFA
 
N

norm9

Member
WedgeX said:
The Detroit Free Press is chronically the 50th Anniversary of the riot, including stories from people in the city at the time.

Riot or rebellion? The debate on what to call Detroit '67

He helped start 1967 Detroit riot, now his son struggles with the legacy

Those killed during the riot:
43 fatal victims of the Detroit riot of 1967

Stories from Detroiters:

'The entire city smelled like smoke,' merchant's son recalls
Doctor 'never saw anything in the Air Force' like that week of riot
Former cop says 1967 riot killed Detroit: 'It'll never come back'
Black lawyer felt obligation to do more than stay home
Detroit NAACP head Rev. Anthony: Police abuse led to 1967 riot
Son of Mayor Jerome Cavanagh believes riot killed dad
1966 student walkout at Northern a sign of things to come
'The shotguns were loaded,' rookie cop recalls
Stunned teen saw riot unfold outside her bedroom window
'It wasn't supposed to happen here'
Black working class was fed up, ready to organize
'That's not a fire, that's something else': Detroit firefighter's daughter tells tale of riot
The officer who led the raid on the blind pig that ignited the riot
Click to expand...

THere s no way this film can capture everything, but I'm gonna love the spotlight it shines though. Itll get people looking to learnmore history.
 
M

Mushroomer25

Member
I just got back from an early screening, and I really didn't care for it. While I can't speak to the racial angle of the Ebert review, I absolutely echo its complaints over the film's writing and structure.

There's a noticable lack of character development in the first act, making the events in the motel unusually numb.

You get the sense that the script (and Bigelow) bit off way more than could be worked through in a single film. There's an excessive amount of context given for how the riots started, and the way it unfolded from both the local and police perspectives. The film also covers the entire trial process, but has to speed through a lot of the ugly details - robbing it of any real tension. The scenes of injustice certainly elicit an emotional response, but they're the same ones dug up by the photographs and news clippings of the actual events.

It's just a horribly bloated film. There's a strong 100 minutes in here, focused on the events inside the motel. They are smothered to death by an hour of meandering, hollow context that is far too brief to be meaningful.

I'm genuinely baffled by the critical reception. This is probably the biggest difference between my personal opinion of a film and the Tomatometer score, ever. If this won Best Picture, it'd be seen as a Crash-level blunder by the Academy.
 
G

Gattsu25

Banned
I posted my impressions in that splinter review thread that was created yesterday. Reposting them here
Gattsu25 said:
I just got back from it and the movie has me conflicted. Well, not really. It made me angry.

And part of that anger is hard to explain, hence the conflict.

It's a well crafted and acted movie blah blah from a technical perspective the movie is amazing. Good? Cool.

The movie repeatedly giving us the white gaze of black trauma is one of my problems with this. The movie starts off by depicting the start of the 1967 detroit riots and then immediately jumps into focusing on property damage and looting during the riots. Close ups, dialog, extended steady cam sequences, the whole works. However, when the movie is depicting the police response to these riots, that footage is much more terse. Police are shown severely beating people in passing. Never more than a few seconds at a time.

Maybe it was because this movie was preceded by a trailer for the remake of the kill-a-negro franchise Death Wish, but all of this bullshit stood out to me.

Police are shown faux-compassionately saying that black people are responsible for the destruction of their community before callously murdering a black man.

Then we eventually get to the extended scenes of black trauma and the movie is unflinching in its depiction. However, each extended scene of black trauma is end-capped with a white person saying how horrible it is. There's a literal line in the movie that sounds like it was ADR'd in where a white cop exclaims something to the effect of "How could anyone even do this to another person, what type of monster would do this" as if to remind us that not all white people are bad. White girls who were assaulted in the same incident also remind us that this type of violence is terrible. And the violence? No matter how explicit and unflinching the movie is, the movie even holds back there as it doesn't even mention the sexual assaults that happened in that real life incident. I guess that would demonize the officers too much.

I don't need the white people in the movie to remind me how horrible what I just witnessed was. The impression I get is that those lines were put in there to remind the audience of how they should feel, should they not be able to emphasize with the tortured or the slain.

I like the occasional unsentimental approach regarding painful subjects like with Changeling. It's part of the reason why I think Clint Eastwood was such a great director. The movie, thankfully, doesn't end when the incident does and I think that the aftermath was portrayed fairly but the first 2/3rds of that movie it felt like the balance was off.


I dunno. I'm rambling and I'm still angry.
Click to expand...
 
L

Lifeline

Member
Saw this yesterday and suprised to see the lack of buzz behind the film, it was good. Near the end it felt like they were stretching things too much, and they could've easily cut some of the runtime down. But I liked the choir scene that the stretch leads to.

Worst part was
when Larry gets spotted by the white cop, and they try their hardest to make him out to be a saint. Felt too on the nose and completely out of place.
 
B

brianmcdoogle

Member
Ok. Where to begin?

I guess I'll start with what I saw. This is kind of an ugly film to watch. Yeah, you can complain about the exaggerated verite style with the bobbing and weaving of the camera, or the high grain, or how those two things don't match later scenes in a
court room (complete with panning newspaper headlines!).
No, the film is kind of ugly for how it washes out all the faces of the Black actors. They just don't look properly lit at times. Faces are flat or obscured way too much in the shadows and darkness of night. And, who knows why, but I'll attribute it to the cinematographer who maybe just isn't as used to lighting those types of skin tones. Compare them to the subtly and depth you get in something like Moonlight or even Straight Outta Compton (who's DP worked with Spike Lee on many films).

And, that kind of lends itself to the central issue of who is making this movie, and who for, and why. It's called Detroit. But, it's about one specific case/trial in that city in the riots. The film opens with colorful drawn vignettes of life with text that nobly tries to give context for the events of the film. However, they are brief and span wide. I'll give credit for mentioning The Great Migration and White Flight to the suburbs as a form of defacto segregation, but immediate context for the riots is lost. As a result, with the initial scenes of an after hours club being raided, the audience is just thrown into the situation. This is the catalyst for the riots, and as quickly as this is done, an angry mob appears and chaos reigns. Until you get to the hotel, there are probably equal shots of rioting and looting than there is police violence.

One of the great strengths of OJ Made in America is that it contextualized the riots. It gave voice and cause for why they happened and why people did what they did. Here, unless you know your history (or are giving the filmmakers a great deal of unearned benefit), things just went off into a spiral where looters and riots erupted. Yes, there are moments where the film cheekily undercuts this, such as when
Cronkite overheard in a news broadcast talking about how the Negroes are looting while the camera notes of a white woman stealing as well
, but those subversive twists don't negate a lot of the faceless angry crowd shots of men throwing rocks or bottles or breaking glass. Without any sort of breathing room or immediate context for this, it kind of becomes a problem.

There's also issues with the white people being so villainous that it allows a white audience to distance themselves and not see any lingering hatred or fear from 2017 exist; other than the generality of police brutality, I didn't notice any direct nods to today's continuing issues. Moreover, and I start this by saying I'm not ready to make this argument completely so let it be just a tangential thought, but the violence and humiliation of the white women is presented as more threatening and degrading than that of the Black men - particularly
the lingering of the scene when the white woman gets her dress torn and she is naked versus the mock executions of the men in the room with the dead body.
. And, yeah, they do have a scene with a white cop at the end who is very good and you do kind of have to wonder if that's there as if to say "not all cops" or what. Oh, and they mention briefly and through voice over about how (ending spoilers)
Miranda wasn't issued to the cops before their statements were taken, but not that this was a tactic by police back then to purposeful make their statements inadmissible.

I could go on, but those are my general impressions of the film. I spoiler'ed some specific plot points for people who don't know the aftermath of the evens of the movie. I could write more or in specifics, but I figured these brief 500 words is enough for now. Now I get to finally listen to all my podcasts and read all those articles/reviews! Maybe I'll update after reading or just make edits.

2/5
 
B

brianjones

Member
spot on mcdoogle

the people just come across as assholes rioting and looting in the beginning because theres no context
 
S

shintoki

sparkle this bitch
This was not a good film.

The few pieces I've read, I'll agree with. This is a flick with nothing to say. It's empty. If you want to pick something so highly politicized, you have to say something and not just try to do a sort of emotionless doc-drama. Shit just sort of happen. You have the club being arrested... no follow up.... girl getting shot... no follow up. Things like this. You can't just do an overview.

Then they sort of introduced the main players throughout... and it's just again. This sort of emotionless detachment they can not shake. Hell, it felt like the characters with the most development were the fucking evil cops.

The terrible shit begins, but it refuses to actually throw a punch. It never gets too violent, there is always a sort of good one still by, etc. Maybe it's following too close or not enough. But I should have been feeling hatred, yet I was sitting there sort of emphatic. The beginning of the flick failed to capitalize on the riots, and you should be feeling the people, but you don't.

Then you get the final third and again... nothing. It never gives a time for any scene to develop with a bunch of characters who were never developed.

It could have been my expectations, but after watching the first act. It should of had me pissed off and angry. Rather, I was wondering who were the main cast and where was this going. 2nd act begins and they basically introduce the cast.... then it all happens. No time to really build up my emotions to care for them. And the 3rd act is the same. I should hate these people and the system. But the evil guys are so detached, they don't really blame the system, and the main cast, I couldn't even recall who some of them were.

If the film was to show the apathy of the population, it succeeded.
 
J

jett

D-Member
shintoki said:
This was not a good film.

Almost all the reviews hit the nail on the head. This is a flick with nothing to say. It's empty. If you want to pick something so highly politicized, you have to say something and not just try to do a sort of emotionless doc-drama. Shit just sort of happen.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a Kathryn Bigelow movie.
 
E

ElBoxyBrown

Banned
shintoki said:
I didn't like Hurt Locker much, but I thought ZDT was solid. I do agree, I don't think she has the emotional punch for this material.
Click to expand...

I thought the 3 chapter approached worked fine in covering a good chunk of the riot. It felt like watching 3 separate small movies.
 
B

brianmcdoogle

Member
shintoki said:
This was not a good film.

Almost all the reviews hit the nail on the head.
Click to expand...

Granted, I'm not through with my backlog of reviews and critical pieces, but which ones are you reading? Most of the one's I've gone through so far have been full of praise (and a lot seem to go out of their way to mention that Henry Lewis Gates wrote the introductory titles).

Here's an excerpt from Film Comment on the movie:

Act I is exposition done right: Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s pithy history of African-Americans making their Great Migration, illustrated with the ”dynamic cubist" art of Jacob Lawrence, whose muscular paintings about the black trek from the Deep South to the Industrial North conjure history on the march. It's a marvelous opening stroke—a statement of the film's ambitious social-political scope and marvelous aesthetic daring.
Click to expand...

?!?!

Edit: I forgot to mention in my original post that the final trailer before the movie started was... Death Wish! (you could hear some groans in the theater).
 
S

shintoki

sparkle this bitch
ElBoxyBrown said:
I thought the 3 chapter approached worked fine in covering a good chunk of the riot. It felt like watching 3 separate small movies.
Click to expand...

I didn't, or at least her attempt. To me, it ended up feeling empty. It's a case where I do think they needed to follow a few of the individuals during what is leading up to the riots more or something. It takes the Captain Phillips route without the focus on a singular character or event.


brianmcdoogle said:
Granted, I'm not through with my backlog of reviews and critical pieces, but which ones are you reading? Most of the one's I've gone through so far have been full of praise (and a lot seem to go out of their way to mention that Henry Lewis Gates wrote the introductory titles).

Here's an excerpt from Film Comment on the movie:

https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/deep-focus-detroit/

?!?!
Click to expand...


I'll be fair, I think I've only read the articles critiquing the film and listen to the Double Toasted. So I'm definitely not basing it on much, probably should edit that portion.
 
V

Vice

Member
Good movie, felt a bit cold but very tense. Worth the middle portion but the first third meanders and the last section goes a bit too fast.
Enjoyed the scattered approach to charater focus. Felt very disorienting.
 
B

brianmcdoogle

Member
Jamelle Bouie, chief political correspondent for Slate Magazine, and a political analyst for CBS News. He's an African American and a big movie buff. He writes a lot on Twitter about movies, particularly popular movies like all the comic book offerings, but will go on podcasts to talk about Kurosawa and others. You've probably seen him on Face The Nation or heard him on the Slate Political Gabfest from time to time. He is a regular host on Trumpcast.

For a movie ostensibly about racial injustice it is weird that the black people are portrayed as an undifferentiated mass of anger.

This is a movie that fetishizes black death.

None of the black characters in this film have interiority independent of the torture they are subjected to.

I have never walked out of a movie before. https://twitter.com/richard_lorant/status/898035199740694529

Walked out.
 
B

brianmcdoogle

Member
Never got posted, but critic Mark Kermode gave it a glowing review on the podcast.

I still stand by my thoughts posted earlier in this thread, and when this comes out for home release, I think I'll try to expand my idea that this movie treats the suffering of the white women much differently than that of the Black men.
 
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