Bigelow and Boal deliver again

Rating: 6/10 (30 November 2017)

"Detroit" is an American 2-hour-and-20-minute movie from this year (2017). The director is Kathryn Bigelow and her writer is once again Mark Boal. And while this duo taught us about military life in enemy countries in their last two efforts, this one here is entirely about domestic issues. It is set in the city of Detroit back in the 1960s where serious riots got the entire place out of control. Of course, the issue was race conflicts and the Blacks living in the city center (with the Whites leaving to the suburbs) went to the streets to fight for their rights and against discrimination. Let me say a few things here: I am all for equality, but if you are indeed stupid enough to set your own houses and neighborhoods on fire hoping somebody else will build them up for you again, stupid enough to violently attack peaceful fire fighters doing their job, then you deserve all that's coming your way. Same goes for looters. You rob a place, you risk getting shot, no matter if by security, the store's owner or police. So my sympathy with these people is basically non-existent. That doesn't mean that a cop shooting a criminal in the back should go free of course. On the contrary, but he also should not be tried for murder.
With such a complex movie about so provocative issues, it's tough to stick to reviewing the film only without getting in one's own opinion, but I will try to be neutral now. I personally would say this was better than The Hurt Locker, but worse than Zero Dark Thirty overall. Bigelow got in actors at the Oscars with both previous films, but it doesn't seem too likely here. Will Poulter deserves it though, he was pretty amazing and carried a large part of the film mostly on his shoulders. This includes the magnificent middle part too, easily the best of the movie and that was definitely better than a ***/*****. I am of course talking about the escalation inside the house after the long introduction to the political situation back then and before the interrogations and courtroom scenes. The latter, i.e. the third chapter, was also fairly good and it was all better than the early parts that had me scared a bit indeed that Bigelow may miss out this time. Also about the amazing middle part, it needs to be said that it was a psychological thriller situation as good as it gets and the racism factor was really unimportant there, even if the lead cop played by Poulter may have been a racist. I think he was much more of a sadist to be honest. He respected the Black guy from the army a bit, but he would have shot the two girls like everybody else had had there been no consequences for that.
All in all, this was certainly a good watch. Maybe this film will not get the same amount of awards attention like Bigelow's two previous, but that doesn't make it necessarily worse or anything. Technically and as far as the thriller elements are concerned, it was really top-notch and it almost never drags despite the gigantic runtime of almost 150 minutes, which also says a lot. This is a film from back in the day when racism truly was a problem still, even if tolerant Whites were also common. Just look at the two young women. People comparing the racial tensions to our time don't understand a thing and they really should be grateful they were not living back then because you really cannot compare these eras. I mean right now we live during times in which we had a Black guy as President and he got re-elected too. Tolerance is everywhere in the civilized world. Don't even try to say otherwise. Yes racism still exists, in both directions actually, but hate will always exist and it exists at least as significant in other areas like religion and terrorism, a far bigger issue these days that needs addressing now and with all means that help stopping it. Anyway, back to the film: I was a bit surprised how insignificant Boyega's character was really because he seemed major from the title. The music component also didn't do too much for me either, but I can somewhat see why they included it due to the real life references. But the violence as explanation for him never playing in clubs again is honestly fairly shoddy. But these cons are just minor for sure and the positive was more frequent than the negative. This is a film that will have you on the edge of your seat at times. Go see it.