A Sadly Familiar Story

Rating: 6/10 (10 August 2017)

"I don't wanna get involved in any civil rights mix up." This quote from Detroit is actively denied at every turn. An incredible film not just for its actual merit, but also for the shocking lack of justice, and the film's refusal to ignore it. It's not an easy movie to like, though it's easy to recommend. That's the problem. The sad prescience is a large part of its success, seeing how little has changed in 50 years. An eye-opening and in-depth vision of the black experience that's unflinching, empathetic, and well-rounded. In 1967, during a time of civil unrest in Michigan, a trio of police officers wreak racial terror on a house of mostly young black men after mistakenly thinking they have a gun. It's told in a potpourri / cinema verite fashion, with a collection of smaller stories all feeding into the larger narrative. At over 2 hours, some of the smaller moments up-front are weak, but once we get into the actual house and the ensuing legal battle, we're hit with the brutal intensity and infuriating horror these people were forced into through no choice of their own. It's all so overwhelming, it would be difficult to believe if not for all the proof we see on the internet every day. Unfortunately, this happened before there was a camera in every pocket and on every eye. Bigelow gives us a view we couldn't have had, showing every angle with dogged specificity. It's far from the best racially charged film we've gotten recently (odd tonal shifts, on-the-nose dialogue, easily fixed miscommunication), but its whistleblower mentality brings a brutal honesty to an all-too-current topic.