A gripping, terrifying and unflinchingly graphic look at urban warfare and race relations, Kathryn Bigelow’s latest film stands strong alongside her previous ground-breaking works of cinema.
Kathryn Bigelow has been working in the film industry for close to 40 years now, with one of her most notable films, The Hurt Locker, earning her the Oscar for Best Director in 2009. Alongside her other works, including Point Break and Zero Dark Thirty, her latest film Detroit shows the director’s strengths in cinematic storytelling.
A detailed portrait of violence, depicting the city of Detroit’s historic 12th street riot in 1967, Bigelow takes a closer look at war on home soil; taking us away from the front-line war films that have seen her succeed in recent years. Despite this geographical distance, Detroit is certainly exemplary of some of the director’s signature styles, with handheld shots and gritty realism almost trapping the audience in the tense moments that drive the film forward.
Set just three three years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex, or national origin, the narrative acts more as a funnel, tightening into a specific event within this time of turbulence. The film centres around the events of the Algiers Motel incident on the night of July 25th, 1967, where three unarmed, teenage, black civilians were beaten to death by police officers. The film offers a visceral historical picture of these events, recreating the night from various victims’ accounts to create a cinematic portrayal of the violence.
Such a brutal subject is something that many filmmakers might stray away from, but this is a style that Bigelow demonstrates a clear understanding of. While Detroit doesn’t offer a typical look at the idea of warfare, the style in which the events are displayed mirrors the tense environment of wars from such films.
While Bigelow’s unique visual style informs a large degree of the film, the stories that are told within it give a human element to the film that resonates with an audience. Written by Mark Boal, Bigelow’s collaborator on her previous two films, the film uses multiple stories of people in various places around Detroit in order for them all to narrow in on the specific events of the film’s crux.
These truthful accounts paired with a more fictionalised approach to the weaving stories surrounding these events makes the film both hard to watch and rewarding at the same time. Some moments in the film may make you feel as if you can’t escape this situation – a very real fear the victims of the Algiers Motel incident would have felt.
Gripping, tense, tragic and above all unforgiving, Detroit may not be your average feel good movie experience, but it’s a film worth watching none the less. A brave piece of cinema from histories only female Oscar winning director to date, this is a film that will hopefully bring to light some of the many issues of inequality we still see in our world on a daily basis.
