Adequate Recreation For A Dark Time.

Rating: 7/10 (5 December 2017)

There's been lots of movies as of recent about racial equality. All their hearts are in the right places, but none are really great or come out at a high degree. 'Detroit' doesn't either, but it comes the closest.
'Detroit' was released fifty years after the riots in 12 Street in Detroit. Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow brings this time to the screen in a riveting fashion. Although not as good as her 'Zero Dark Thirty' or 'The Hurt Locker,' 'Detroit' does show that she is one of the best directors working today.
This movie deals with a mob of black people from Detroit that riot the streets to make a statement against racist police brutality. As a result of the riots, police get worse and so do the riots, so the vicious circle of violence is plunging the city into the ground. The first 20 minutes or so is just showing the web of violence with no development, just war on the street. Bigelow's two big films are war movies, so it was only natural to try to use her specialty in a different light. I found it unnecessary. I understand that the riots were basically wars on the streets, but riots tend to feature a great sense of brutality and unease. The movie doesn't get deep enough into the horrors of the riots.
After awhile of seeing the violence in the streets, the movie finally switches gears and finally introduces the audience to characters we can root for in this awful time. Developing characters is key for the audience to get a real sense of danger they face. At the centre of it is the R&B group The Dramatics. They want a record deal and for the violence to just stop. They wind up at the Algiers Motel where they meet up with a couple of white girls. Having a good time, one of them has a toy gun that looks real and scares everyone. It's pretty funny. The gun can use blanks and shoots it as a joke to show how insane the police force has gone. The police arrive thinking there's snipers and violently raid their room. The room is far too big to be a motel room, so I didn't buy it entirely. The police violently scare and abuse each person into making them confess to where the gun is. This second act is pretty similar to Truman Capote's 'In Cold Blood.' If you are familiar with 'In Cold Blood,' you will likely appreciate the seemingly coincidental parallels between the two. This large chunk of the film works so well because Bigelow pulls no punches and really tries to evoke emotion though great movie-making and accuracy of police horror. Will Poulter is at his most vicious as the lead cop that terrorizes these innocent people. The 'In Cold Blood' aspect takes up the majority of the film over something trivial. But cops really were like that. The gun was never found, the cops get off scot-free, and no one knows exactly what happened.
Here's why it will always remain a mystery of what exactly happened: the cops were brutalizing these people, keeping them in one position so they could not see everything that was happening. And the cops just stick with their story.
After the 'In Cold Blood' chunk of the film, it sumps into a generic courtroom drama. The first and final acts are too generic to make the movie as a whole live up to its potential. It's similar to 'Cast Away' in that respect: people only want to see Tom Hanks on the island, before and after that are boring.
The cops are one-dimensional and the character development is not very high either, so the overall value does not reach its potential. And two of the three acts are average. Saved by a great middle, 'Detroit' is an adequate movie I recommend to be watched.
3/4