Review of Detroit (2017) by Spangle — 04 Aug 2017

As a child, you are told that the police are there to protect you. If ever you should find yourself in a sticky situation, calling the cops is the safest option as there is an obvious line between the good and bad guys. As a white person, this largely stays true. However, this continues to be proven incorrect as time goes on. Initially, it was black people crying out for justice in the face of police brutality. Yet, whites turned a blind eye, as their experience told them that only the guilty fear the cops or are arrested. When police brutality began spilling into the public eye and into the suburbs, however, everybody was finally able to get on the same page. Films such as Detroit and the various court cases in which innocent people were heinously gunned down by cops only for the cops to then get off free, further bring the issue to light. While there are good cops and any absolute statement about the police is without merit, there remains one thing that is absolutely certain: the slogan "protect and serve" is accurate insofar as the cops protect and serve themselves and their fellow officers. If a person, no matter innocence, dares to question the cops or is deemed to have interfered with them in some fashion, then they may as well start calling funeral homes because they are not leaving the situation alive. In the fifty years since the Detroit riots, the established fact that the cops are not to be trusted and are the enemy of all unless proven otherwise has gone nowhere. Riots still happen. Innocents are slaughtered by prejudiced and violent psychopaths in cop uniforms. Those cops still get let off free. Helpless and frightened, the victims in this film are just a few of the thousands that cops have lashed out against without provocation, so do not let your skin color provide you with a false sense of protection. When it comes to you or them, cops will opt to "protect and serve" themselves first no matter how innocent you may be. Over the course of two hours, Detroit brilliantly depicts this as black men and white women are violently tortured by white and black cops, while some cops offer a helping hand in the midst of the darkness. It is a surprisingly balanced and reasonable approach to such a hotly contested issue, yet it never shies away from showing the truth in every bloody detail.

Chilling in this display, Detroit often plays out like a horror film. With director Kathryn Bigelow slowly building the tension and setting the scene, it is obvious that emotions are high from the very beginning. Though the riot kicks off after the opening raid on an after hours club, tensions are high even in that scene. Perfectly setting the stage for the rest of the film, Bigelow shows the foundation of the war zone. Neither side trusts each other and both are all too willing to escalate the situation beyond repair. Rapidly unraveling to the boiling point, Bigelow takes the time to establish the riots without unnecessary exposition and then never rushes into getting to the Algiers Motel. While perhaps some of the backstory on the singing group is a bit excessive, the film refuses to skip over details. Every bit is important is establishing the innocence of the men and women in the Algiers, while also showing why the cops would be so hot under the collar and the deaths already caused by the cops. To anybody even casually watching the film, the anger of the men in the Algiers and the tired frustration of the cops can be felt in its entirety. By the time Bigelow finally allows the action to kick off in the home, her slow atmospheric build-up has left the audience falling off of the edge of its seat just waiting to watch the horror that will unfold on this fateful night.

Once the events in the hotel kick in and reach their conclusion, however, the film somehow ramps up the horror even further. If watching black people systematically and remorselessly killed in spite of their innocence was not horrifying enough, Bigelow shows the true horror that unfolds. Not only are they killed, but their murderers can get away with it without or with very little punishment. As a timely social issue film, Detroit not only shows just how little has changed, but brings to light just horrifying the results of the trials are in context. It is not just the potentially justified shooting of an unarmed civilian. It is the intentional shooting of an unarmed civilian with no evidence supporting their assumed guilt. It is murder derived out of a misunderstanding and chaos that has deadly results and no repercussions. It is the kind of horror that is a bit more subtle and less obvious than the bloody psychological and physical torture endured by those in the Algiers, but it is just as horrifying and relies far more on subtle direction from Bigelow to come off properly.