Portrait of a War Zone

Rating: Null/10 (28 December 2017)

"Detroit" seeks to reconstruct the July 25, 1967 murders in the Algiers Motel during the heart of the summer riots in Detroit. Because the facts of what happened in the motel were skewed during the show trial of three Detroit police officers, the filmmakers have attempted to interview eyewitnesses in order to reconstruct the sequence of events at the Algiers Motel. The film largely succeeds as a quasi documentary presented as a conventional Hollywood feature film.
The film presents essential background about the Great Migration of the turn of the twentieth century in which as many as six million African-Americans moved to the northern industrial cities in search of work and the American Dream. But in Detroit of the post-World War II years, which was the fifth largest city in the nation, there was a mass exodus to the suburbs, primarily of the white middle class. The Detroit of 1967 was a highly segregated metropolis with a total African-American population of 40% and a police force that was 95% white. This was the backdrop for the riots in the boiling summer of 1967.
From the historical and sociological perspectives, the trial scene was the most important in the film. In an outrageous miscarriage of justice, the three Detroit police officers were found not guilty of the murders of three men at the Algiers motel. It is mind-boggling to contemplate who the all-white jury members believe killed the victims? In one of the best lines in the script, the upshot of the trial is that "police criminality needs to be treated the same as any other criminality." After the passage of fifty years, the same question might be raised in the American court system in 2017.
In its aesthetics and construction, "Detroit" was not a perfect film. The close-ups and the hand-held camera eventually lost their impact due to over use. A number of the characters and situations were underdeveloped. For example, what were Julie Ann Hysell and her friend Karen doing in Detroit at the heart of the riots? Hysell even appears in one of the bonus segments of the DVD, yet does not fill us in on this basic exposition. One of the young women was apparently the daughter of an Ohio judge. Yet it was never clear what motivated them to visit the heart of Detroit in the summer of 1967.
Another poorly constructed plot strand concerns the film's principal villain, the racist cop named Krauss. Early in the film, Krauss shoots and kills a man who was looting groceries. Krauss is called in to the office of his supervisor, Detective Tanchuck. The detective advises Krauss that he will be facing murder charges, but chooses not to suspend the officer, sending him right back on the streets to the vicinity of the Algiers Motel. The murder charges for the first killing are never raised again in the film. Did Tanchuck simply bury his report? The film never explains.
1,100 National Guardsmen were called into Detroit in the summer of 1967, along with special combat units. Tanks were lined up and down 12th Street. The film is successful in conveying a major American city as a "no-man's land." Decent citizens like Melvin Dismukes were caught up the terror of racist cops in the City of Detroit. As indicated on one of the excellent bonus segments on the DVD, it was suggested that all police trainees today should view this film. And they should also follow the advice of a kind nurse in the hospital who offered good counsel to the visitors of one of the victims of the riots: "Be gentle."