stripe."Detroit" is a movie that is set in 1967 but it is a statement about the type of policing that continues to occur far too frequently in many African American communities. Just as it is not possible to talk about the recent events in Ferguson, NYC, Minneapolis,Baltimore, Chicago, Charleston, Cleveland etc., etc. without expressing a particular point of view, "Detroit" will also reveal many pf our biases as we process the portrayal of the searing events as they may have occurred at the Algiers Motel in the midst of a race riot."Detroit" will also force us to talk about our preferences for films that move and disturb us over those that simply entertain and the amount of "historical accuracy" we expect to see in non- documentaries that are set in earlier times. Bigelow shoots the movie with an unflinching eye and her point of view is obvious. She errs on the side of the cringe worthy and outrageous when depicting evil and the actors are committed, inspired and superbly directed. "Detroit" is a film that is as difficult to watch as any two hour merciless tragedy involving people we know and care about and it is deeply stirring as it incites if not assaults our emotions. This is a stunning film but well crafted art, like our own reflections in the finest of mirrors, isn't always pretty. "Detroit" intends to upset, provoke and unsettle and, by that account, it is an unmitigated success.

historically accurate" criticism is being played here. Dunkirk isn't historically accurate, Gettysburg wasn't historically accurate..and so on. Think of all the films that portrayed native Americans and African slaves in ways that made them look evil or savage. It seems that some films, topics, and directors get away with all kinds of fancy. Don't be fooled. This movie is great.

the film, you will be set on edge by the shakiness of the camera and jarring cuts. This alone creates tension that is only ratcheted up little by little as the film progresses. There are many scenes, that because of the tension created with the camera-work, along with the terrifying nature of the situation, feel like something out of a horror film. Every actor here gives a near flawless performance. While John Boyega is being marketed as the star of the film which, duh, he was in Star Wars , this is actually a film without a standard Hollywood- style star. These actors—even the bigger names—are treated as equally important details in a larger event. In fact, despite the presence of Boyega, Anthony Mackie, and Jason Mitchell, I was blown away most by the lesser-known Algee Smith. The performances here are emotional, powerful, but most of all, real. None of these actors feel like they are acting for an Academy Award, instead each actor embodies the real life people that lived through these events.The shocking nature of this film is all thanks to the film's subject matter. But I'm not here to critique subject matter. Detroit, from a purely narrative standpoint, is brilliantly written—jumping from characters and timelines until all roads meet at the film's crescendo. Instead of the route Dunkirk chose—throwing you right into the fire with characters you don't know—Detroit instead gives each character scenes that let you get to know them as people, allowing you to genuinely care about them.While this is a great film, it is a hard watch. This is an emotionally grueling film in the same way 12 Years a Slave and Fruitvale Station are. With that being said, the two and a half hour run time of this film is exhausting. There is not much that could be cut out of this film, but the length is something that can really work against this film.Detroit is a poignant film, not only due to the masterful direction and performances, but because of it's relevance in the world we live in today. This is an unflinching, timely achievement—and may be Kathryn Bigelow's magnum opus.

underway.Even having watched some really gritty movies lately Shot Caller and Dunkirk I still had to admire how Detroit drops you right in the middle of this tumultuous period of Detroit's history. The action is in your face and they don't shy away from the brutality. Although Detroit feels firmly grounded in reality, the movie does have a sense of style. The beginning has an animated segment that isn't pretty and they use it to drive home the hopelessness of the situation. It certainly does the intended job. While the action does hit home, the shaky cam did push the envelope and there were a couple of times I wish they had stayed a little more static. There were some quick moments where the camera could cause a little motion sickness.Addressing the elephant in the room, Detroit was given the green light because a lot of these issues are still stuff many people grapple with on a daily basis. Its not something that people like to discuss but that doesn't mean that it doesn't take place. One of the things that surprised me about Detroit is that they don't force a ton of comparisons to the present day upon the audience Free State of Jones was an example of something like that . The horror of the material speaks for itself and they didn't need to jam metaphors about how times haven't changed down our throat. These problems do exist and hopefully this movie will help some people come around on those issues but the story is completely self contained and I actually appreciated it for doing that way. They trust the viewer to draw their own connections and it isn't common to take such a mature approach.Detroit dips its toes into a couple of different genres but where it works best is when its in the thick of this terrible situation. It is an engrossing and tense thriller. This movie is so hard to watch, a couple of people left the theatre and I honestly couldn't blame them. Things get downright brutal and where some stories play with some of the characters having ambiguous motives, this is not one of those. The villains are disgusting and their behaviour is downright heinous so there isn't a question of who your rooting for. Every turn the story makes, things get nastier but you can't turn away.Detroit's cast is well rounded and there is definitely some excellent acting from everyone involved but 1 person kind of steals the show. Will Poulter is the villain of the piece as Krauss and he puts on a show that rivals Michael Fassbender in 12 Years a Slave. This feels like a coming out performance for him, his character is so detestable but I have to tip my hat to him. John Boyega gets top billing as Dismukes and he handles the material well but this was more of an ensemble. I was also surprised that Anthony Mackie made an appearance, he's one of the more accomplished actors in the cast but he's in a supporting part. He acquits himself well though. Algee Smith and Jacob Lattimore are both excellent as Larry and Fred. Hannah Murray and Kaitlyn Dever are also really good as Julie and Karen respectively.If I had one complaint about Detroit other than the fact that the subject matter is super depressing is that by the time you get to the end of the movie, it does begin to drag. This is a long movie and I get why they had to include so much but I was hoping for a quicker resolution when we got past the 2hr mark.Detroit was always going to be a controversial movie but the movie steers into the skid. I more or less fall on the critics' side, this movie has a tight story that is more topical than we would like to admit. I can't verify if it's 100% historically accurate, there's been some debate in the other user reviews and I'm willing to concede that they probably took some liberties with it. But judging it as a movie, I was shocked yet I couldn't turn away from Detroit. I would applaud Kathryn Bigelow for handling this touchy issue so well and despite the length I would recommend giving this a chance.

Mitchell, Jacob Latimore, Hannah Murray, Kaitlyn Dever, Jack Reynor, Ben O'Toole, John Krasinski and Anthony Mackie who also costarred in 'THE HURT LOCKER' . It's received almost unanimous positive reviews from critics, and it's also a modest hit at the Box Office as well. I found it to be extremely well made and involving.The film begins with a police raid of a private party, in 1967 Detroit, which then resulted in multiple days of rioting. The story then centers on a police raid of the Algiers Motel, on July 25th, where police believed a sniper fired on them from. The raid resulted in the terrorizing of several black suspects, and two white women, and the deaths of some of those involved. The story then shifts to the court room battle that followed the incident.The movie is interesting, and pretty intense, from pretty much the opening scene until the last. All of the performances are good in it as well, and of course Bigelow's direction is almost flawless. For me the film was also very educational, as I knew very little about these events in history prior to seeing the movie . I think the film is yet another great example of what a talented filmmaker Bigelow is, and obviously her and Boal make a great team together too. It's also cool to see Boyega in another strong starring role; a 'STAR WARS' actor that's actually making a name for himself outside of the franchise is always good to see.Watch our movie review show 'MOVIE TALK' at: https://youtu.be/W6So6Kz52VQ

to a U.S city, really on edge and ready for battle. Like one character says, it seems "like Nam". And also like Nam, the civilian casualties really leave you pressed against your seat in horror. This is a response to all out riots which go on for several days, as a result of black people being rounded up and beaten by the police. Even black service men are treated abysmally. One thing I wish this movie would have done more with is what is the driving point of wanting to destroy one's home in order to attain social justice? The movie tells us black- owned businesses wrote 'soul brother' on their windows in solidarity with the protesters but they were still ransacked just as hard, but that's all the info we're given.But regardless of that, Boal and Bigelow have set up a clear bias that the cops consider blacks less than by the time we get to the real heart of the story, and what comes next proves that they were just getting warmed up. We've seen something like this before and the real tragedy is it always starts with something very small that snowballs into a living, breathing nightmare. We're looking at men being lined up at gunpoint and shot, beaten, women molested, there's more, it's horrible.This is a horror movie. I've seen "Annabelle: Creation", that's horrific but it's fun. This is the type of horror movie that really does leave you feeling the world is a messed up place. Bigelow really couldn't do a better job of setting this scene. You hear the cracks across the face with the gun, she focuses in on shaking and holding hands for support. And that cute kid from "Chronicles of Narnia" and "Maze Runner" has this whole other side to him where he can seem like the biggest racist, psychopathic cop among a sea of other racist psychopathic cops. Honestly, I kept looking for a white cop in this movie who seemed somewhat solid in his decision-making and there's maybe one. Will Poulter is so good in this movie that everyone else kinda seems less than. John Boyega is here as a guard whose just trying to survive the night and pacify where he can, but in the end I thought he came off just as ineffectual as his character does. Like there is this whole thing in the end of how his character received death threats after all this and really had a tough life but it tells us this in text at the end of the movie and doesn't show. Also the last 40 minutes or so I thought felt like a bit of a slog as Bigelow just seems to be quickly brushing over the outcomes of all this in general. In the end I liked the movie but felt it could have gotten a bit closer to most of it's characters and given us more insights into those struggles characters faced following this event. But this really is one of those points in American history where you just leave ashamed to be white; not to say that is the film's purpose cause it's not. It's eye-opening though because "oddly enough", this is a situation where problems concerning race were not fixed and 50 years later, they're still not fixed. All we're doing is celebrating wins on either side which is ridiculous. People are still happy about O.J. for Christ sake. A guy who knelt during a football season and gave millions to charity still can't get a job.So I give it an 8 out of 10. If you guys liked this, please check out Craig James Review on Youtube for more.

and destroying the nearby businesses, even with tags of "Soul Brother" as a way to try to protect their black owned business. However, most of the film centers around the several young men and 2 women staying in the Algiers Motel as Carl Cooper had a starter pistol and shot in the air, as police mistaken it for a sniper, and begin to surround the Algiers and harass and intimidate the guests beyond recovery.What the director Kathryn Bigelow Zero Dark Thirty is create a consistent tension when seeing the scene in the motel play out, and lets the viewer view helplessly as they see the psychological harassment these young people faced against police and even marshals not even stepping in. The acting is very solid across the board, particularly Algee Smith Ralph Tresvant in The New Edition Story and Will Pouter We're the Millers & Maze Runner as a racist cop that Will performs almost too hauntingly well and could argue a Best Supporting Actor award for his performance.The film also includes Jacob Lawrence's Migration series, a 60 panel epic from the 1940's in a 3D esque animated way to explain to the audience how things got to where they area, however, I don't feel stylistically it was the right case for this kind of film narratively. The Jason Bourne-style shaky cam gets VERY jarring at times and hard to digest given there is very few moments when the cameras still, even in the quiet developmental periods. Also there's a scene early on involving Will's character with a decision he makes and how the characters handle his discipline that feels like a glaring flaw of how he could be allowed to progress in the story without giving too much away.Detroit is not a easy film to watch, nor does it desire to be. While it can serve for a good introduction for people who never heard of the riots, the film was better titled Algiers Motel as the riots is more of the backdrop and less of a history lesson.

no sugarcoating included. The Black community embraced unlicensed after-hours club for the initiators of violence. The White police officers reacted to the rebellion by scaring them with death games. In any other director's hands, this project would have turned out as hate-fueled anti-White propaganda much like The Birth of a Nation or Get Out; rather, director Kathryn Bigelow The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty and her team made great strides to tell the real story of what happened in Detroit.Everything within the first charcoal-tinted twenty minutes brings sense into Detroit's economic structure of the time. With each bike stolen, with each fire set ablaze, with each fireman injured by a thrown rock, with each Black woman sexually harassed by an officer, with each piece of real historical news footage, the attention closes in on the personal conflict within the riot rather than the spectacle itself. Although the usage of religious institutions deserved stronger prevalence across the entire runtime to match the moral strife of the time, the big picture still explodes with a great undying flame.True to Bigelow's traditional style, a documentary approach records the dramatized events. Despite an unnecessary musical score by James Newton Howard The Fugitive, Michael Clayton , a grainy Steadicam stressfully complements the sudden edit cuts, transferring the 1967 motion sickness into your own eyeballs.The tension really sets its spark ablaze during the entire middle chunk: a motel-set interrogation in search for a blank-loaded gun aimed at the police outside. These victims, two of them Ohio-local White prostitutes, the rest young Black men, face the worst of Detroit's hate over the next hour and a half. The one holding the gun is shot dead, nobody knows the gun's whereabouts, yet the cops only see an easy chance to humiliate the weak one by one.Every performer gives their greatest effort, the most impactful being a respectful Army Veteran who to the police is no different than any other negro. But Larry, a struggling musician also harassed that dreadful night, adds the most soul to our soulless history. The two whores receive the same poor treatment as their Black companions, lovingly supporting each other even after one gets stripped nude by a cop. While their stories lack their full potential, standing more as victims than empowering female role models, their sentimentality despite their destructive lifestyles make it easy for women to connect with. As with the other Black victims, none of them were motivated enough to cheer on, yet you can still tell them each apart simply by looking at their wardrobe.By now, I believe screenwriter Mark Boal The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty just proved himself to be the most underrated writer in Hollywood today, as he achieved great heights to the artform by writing under a variety of styles, including courtroom drama, real time, and visual storytelling. His intense dialogue helps us to physically feel the situation without coming off as one-sided. He structures the multiple events so that every death hits you hard in the right timing, as true to the expressed motives we learn about each character, whether Black or White.The issues seen here at Detroit looks upsettingly familiar to the anti- Trump riots we see today, almost normalized on a daily basis as it was back then. However, hope manages to lie within its social message: no stereotypes raise their ugly head, not all Blacks involved in the riots are mean spirited, and not all cops are racists. The different social groups stand up for one another and some even stand up for the other side, in a story everybody over the age of eighteen needs to know at once, especially now during the summer season.So bottom line, this history lesson matters to you: Black or White, male or female, young or old, innocent or guilty!