An hour too long.

Rating: 5/10 (19 August 2017)

'Detroit' is the latest from award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow. As the poster indicates she's helmed such films as 'Hurt Locker' and 'Zero Dark Thirty'. Which are pretty solid war flicks. So, naturally, this film had my interest. An Oscar-winning director taking on a film about the Detroit riots in the 60's? Count me in. However, this film is her sloppiest effort yet. If I was to go into this film unaware of who was behind the camera I would be shocked to learn that she has an Oscar to her name. This mainly stems from the structure and characters of the film. Because there really isn't any. But before I go to into that, I should say right off the bat that this is not about the Detroit riots.
This is an isolated event that happened during the riots. Which is the most frustrating part of this movie. There is a solid, sharp, tension filled 90-minute film in this 150-minute exercise. This should have just been about the Algiers Hotel and what happened in it. Get rid of all the Detroit riot stuff, get rid of the fake character development, and focus on this hotel incident.
Instead, it shoves in a near pointless opening act and a completely useless closing act. It opens showing the riots are in full swing. People are throwing cocktails, looting buildings, and setting fire to anything they can get their hands on. It conveys this with a bizarre back and forth cutting between the film and real footage. What's the point of that? If you're going to make a film, make a film. If you're going to make a documentary make a documentary.
Cutting back and forth between real footage and "dramatized" action just makes for an incredibly confusing start to a film that is ultimately not even about this. So why include it at all? This is the very definition of filler and it's completely baffling. However, the confusion comes to a head in the films final act. There are roughly thirty minutes of character arcs that literally don't serve any purpose to the film.
What's the point of learning that one of the black guys turned as racist as the cops that beat him? Why should we care about these characters that are hardly fleshed out? What's the literal point of pretending that anyone actually cares about these flat, boring plot devices? If this film opened and closed with the events that happen in the Algier Hotel you don't even need to try and give the characters arcs.
Instead of giving this jumbled, sporadic view of the events focus on one character. Make John Boyega the main character and only show us what he see's. It's literally that easy to fix. Cut out all the unnecessary fat. Instead of making this about five people make it about one. If you do, the event suddenly feels more personal and tense. If all you know is what the main character does then there would be palpable tension because you wouldn't know who to trust either.
Aside from these complaints, I can say that this film isn't bad. The 90 minutes in the Algier hotel are all great. The camera work, costumes, and acting is all pretty much great in this situation. If I were to simply judge the film based on this portion I would be coming across far more positive, but since there's another hour to this film I can't help but feel underwhelmed. The film isn't what it promises to be and has in an unnecessary amount of filler that makes a lot this film boring or uneven. It's not a film that I can call bad but I still don't like it.