(Currently in wide release)
**** (four out of five stars)
by Walter G. Tarrow
Take a racist to see this movie, but if, and only if, you intend to discuss what you’ve seen, what you’ve experienced, afterward with open minds. But with the realistic expectation that minds, attitudes and beliefs won’t be changed, only to examine the view that has been presented. And, keep in your mind, what makes you so sure you are not, even the slightest bit, a racist yourself?
Everyone, every human, every thinking feeling being has prejudice. Prejudice is a shorthand survival mechanism. It is in our cognitive DNA.
What elevates us above our hard wiring is the pause to contemplate the consequences of our choices and our actions. The moment to consider the other, to empathize, to try to put yourself in their shoes, to wear their skin. Bigelow, through her eye for detail and urgent camera work, gives us that under the skin viewpoint. Viscerally so.
Detroit is a film of prejudices, preconceived notions, short-sighted expectations, impulsive and emotional actions taken under the influence, and with guns, played out in a war zone.
The film tells of the uprising, rebellion and rioting of the African American community in Detroit in the summer of 1967. The movie within the movie, focuses on the killing of three black men by Detroit police at the Algiers Motel and Manor. an incident that encapsulates and intensifies much of what was happening in the city at large.
It begins with a prelude told, like a children’s story book, with crayon and animation, in simple schoolbook terms, about the migration of black Americans from the South to the industries of Detroit, to the promise of the American dream.
Then, in the historic context of the civil rights movement, the incident that sparked the battles to come, a raid on an illegal after hours black establishment, a blind pig, and the unavoidable confrontation between the police and the gathering crowd erupts into rocks thrown, shop windows smashed, a bicycle stolen.
And so it began, it comes, with fire and fury, to the surface.
Kraus, a Detroit policeman, played by Will Poulter, shoots a fleeing looter, and, brought before his captain, is told he will be charged with murder. But, he incredulously asks, what he was supposed to do? We don’t shoot looters he is told and is promptly put back on the streets.
We are introduced to Larry, lead singer for the Dramatics, and his friend, his “bodyguard” Fred, as the group is denied their debut on stage at the Fox Theater by the spreading violence outside the theater doors. Larry takes Fred to the Algiers Hotel to leave the violent streets for a night of rest and relaxation, quickly connecting with a pair of white girls from Ohio and meeting a number of other young black men in the annex of the Algiers, including Greene, a black Vietnam veteran, who only wants to return to the stability and civility of a stateside job.
Defiantly, but more cavalier than confrontational, a “toy pistol” is fired at the police and military outside and a one-sided fire flight devolves into a raid on the annex and the group becomes captive in a hallway to be subjected to relentless and harrowing interrogations led by Kraus, assisted by his fellow officers and knowingly avoided by Michigan State police and the National Guard.
We feel terrifyingly frustrated and powerless pressed up extremely close to the faces against the wall in that hellish hallway. We are there, so very there, but we’re not. We can’t reason with the trapped. For both police and accused are trapped here by their choices, their actions.
We plead with the victims. “Why won’t you just tell them the one thing you know, the one thing that will set you, all of you, free?” We beg the inquisitors. “Please let this go. They were just having fun and they hurt no one.” But we stay on the edge of our seats because neither hears or even thinks to listen.
Although Boyega, Poulter and Mackie have their followers, Bigelow has mastered the art of casting lesser known actors and allowing the performances to come through. Boyega, as Dismukes, the security guard always trying to help, slowly comes to realize he is helpless and must be complicit in order to survive. Kraus is chilling in his simple conviction that he is the defender of truth and the principle that all bad guys get the justice they deserve.
The obligatory conclusion of injustice and disillusionment may be factual, but in tone continues the dreadful sense that we, along with the unfortunate party people at the Algiers, are still trapped in that hallway.
As Larry said from his hospital bed, echoing Marvin Gaye, “what’s going on?”
And I, from the top of the coke ovens on Zug Island, looking at the glow of fires from afar in the dark night, asked the same question.
Indeed, perhaps even more so today, what’s going on?
