Review of Detroit (2017) by Cris C — 05 Aug 2017

Good filmmaking in terms of technique, beautiful sound design and decent performances by the players. But its heart is cold and faked. Imaginary reconstructed riots the start of that, although the opening contextual text by Henry Louis Gates Jr is risible.

Maybe it was had been cut to heck, but it made me cringe before the film even got into gear. Otherwise it's a clutch of cliches. Who knows who the audience might be, other than white people who have been living under a rock.

It telegraphs its every narrative move and then bashes the viewer with vicarious good cop / bad cop stuff that ignores systemic racism. It waves some gratuitous sexually abusive menace. It lingers in the Algiers Motel to banal purpose and then slumbers through a bunch of stereotypes about the freighting of the legal process (witnesses discredited, white juries acquiring cops &c).

There is nothing there to rouse interest. I would far rather have seen a smart documentary. The story is important of course, but now its ground is sort of squatted on by something wholly inadequate and the entire city saddled by being named after this vacant if well-meaning misstep.