gritty, in-your-face, hard to watch as it should be.

Rating: 8/10 (7 August 2017)

With Detroit, ostensibly about one night of terror that cops bring on a group of black men (and two white women) after a toy gun goes off as tensions are high during the 67 riots, Bigelow returns to the horror genre. The vampires are gone - you cant compare them to cops. It's shot in a documentary style, but its content brings it into a realm of the visceral disgust of the and in the human spirit. The cast gets to show themselves as human beings before the living nightmare takes hold - even, to the extent the movie can allow Will Poulter, who is the quintessential young-racist cop devaluing his position to that of a terrorist after realizing he won't get support from his superiors (when we first see him he shoots a man stealing groceries in the back, killing him) - so that only makes it much worse.
It's showing the dark side of the American character; Night of the Living Dark Thirty (it also seems like an unintentionally poetic irony that it's the Algiers motel, ala the Pontecorvo film, to which Bigelow and Boal owe a debt). Like their previous 2012 film, it looks at torture and justice, but here its less ambiguous where its intentions and spirit lies. It may not be subtle, but this subject isn't supposed to be, and there's no such thing as indifference when it comes to the shock of oppressors and the oppressed. Like Romero's film, it's intention is to make you feel like there's not a moment of breath to be had. It's a reality that provokes with the underlying point (especially at whites): what the hell is going to be done about this?
One fault: its too long. Or, more approximately, it almost feels like the movie is over by the time its at the last 20 minutes. We know where this train is headed because its the same goddamned train American police have been riding on in the courts when it comes to violence and murder. Trim maybe 15 minutes and it could be a masterpiece.
As it stands its really good and perhaps so strong a tonic that its hard to see wanting to experience more than once. At the same time I can understand it rubbing some as too much; the review on Rogerebert.com went as far as to say it was not right for a white person/white people to make it. I totally get this being upsetting - but I put it to you (and I know I started this review comparing it to other works by Bigelow, notably her breakthrough Near Dark but that's just me): if you didn't know it was directed by a 65 year old white woman and written by a white (former) journalist, would that stand out? Does it truly make a mark against this all? I don't buy it.