Very uncomfortable viewing but powerful movie-making

Rating: Null/10 (6 September 2017)

There are far too few female film directors and probably none as commercially and artistically successful as the American Kathryn Bigelow. Her two previous works, "The Hurt Locker" and "Zero Dark Thirty", were both outstanding and showed men in uniform under pressure.
"Detroit" has the same essential theme but, as the title makes clear, this time we are on Bigelow's home territory of the United States. Indeed we are in the midst of actual events, the race riot which took place in one of the country's major cities over five days in July 1967 when 43 were killed, 1,200 injured, 7,000 arrested, and 2,000 buildings burned down.
As the film unfolds, the focus constantly narrows, starting with a quick animated history of black migration in the USA, moving on to the rioting throughout the 12th Street area of Detroit, then closing in on the Algiers Motel, and finally remaining in real time in an annex to the motel where we find ourselves in a kind of horror movie.
This is a long film and the final segment jumps forward a couple of years, with glimpses of the court case where all the accused were acquitted, to conclude with short text advising the viewer on what happened to the chief characters in the incident.
If this is a cinematic tour de force by Bigelow, it is a tribute too to writer Mark Boal and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, both of whom she has worked with before. The inter-cutting of contemporary news footage and the use of hand-held cameras mean that the viewer is drawn into a seamless exposition that, from the beginning, induces anxiety and, during the interrogation sequence, is some of the most uncomfortable viewing outside of the horror movie genre.
The acting is excellent across the piece, but the stand-out performances come from two British actors: John Boyega ("The Force Awakens") as the black security guard caught up in the events and Will Poulter ("THe Revenant") as the white Detroit cop who orchestrates the whole macabre, and ultimately murderous, shake-down
I saw Bigelow interviewed about her latest movie on "The Daily Show" and it is clear that she regards "Detroit" as not simply a 50th anniversary commemoration of a dark period of American history but a call to today's America to recognise that race is still a bitterly divisive feature of society that continues all too often to witness young black men being shot down by white policemen who are rarely called to account at a time when the current occupant of the White House is adding by word and deed to the already toxic atmosphere.