White police officers shoot and kill unarmed black men. A community is outraged. The justice system offers no satisfying conclusion. Anger, resentment and confusion return to simmer-mode, waiting for the next violent act to boil over.
The scenario from today's headlines was also quite prevalent 50 years ago in the aftermath of the riots in Detroit in the summer of 1967. Director Kathryn Bigelow has turned those events into her latest drama, "Detroit," a brutal retelling of the white vs. black social tensions that are tragically timeless.
It's a powerful reminder of our ugly past and a hugely important topic, but it is not an especially captivating film.
"Detroit" is depressing and disturbing, as it should be. But there is little in the way of a punctuated payoff or character development. We don't really get to know the protagonists. They are more representational.
The riots were among many in racially divided American cities between 1965 and 1968. The Detroit unrest was provoked by a police raid of a black after-hours club on July 23, 1967.
Soon the city was filled with looting, arson and bloody conflicts between the police and the rioters, with innocent people dragged into the horrors. As the violence escalated, a curfew was imposed, the state police and Michigan National Guard were called in.
Bigelow shot her film docudrama-style, and weaves in archive footage from the real riots and the reactions from the statehouse and White House. President Lyndon Johnson sent federal troops. Tanks rolled through the streets.
The first half of the film is largely devoted to the riots and the looming sense that with all those fingers on all those triggers, this will not end well.
The movie then shifts to its primary focus: The abuse that occurred inside the annex of the Algiers Motel. The young people unlucky enough to be inside the motel at that time are subjected to repeated threats, harassment, beatings and worse. Three of them are shot and killed.
The ringleader of the terror is a police officer named Krauss (Will Poulter). Krauss is a sadistic racist from central casting who prods his fellow officers into inflicting extensive punishment. Sick and unrelenting, the Algiers ordeal turns into something out of Michael Haneke's Funny Games, in which a family is terrorized by two psychopaths.
We are familiar, tangentially, with some of the unfortunate souls being abused. Larry (Algee Smith) is the lead singer of the Dramatics, a vocal group that hopes to score some Motown magic. Fred (Jacob Latimore) is his young friend. Greene (Anthony Mackie) is just back from Vietnam. Carl (Jason Mitchell) is a goofball who fired a toy gun out of a window, prompting the authorities to come crashing through the doors.
The young black men are accompanied by two white girls, Julie and Karen (Hannah Murray and Kaitlyn Dever), visiting from Ohio. The suggestion that the men were cavorting with these girls enrages the white officers even further. Caught in the crossfire is Melvin Dismukes (John Boyega), a good-hearted black security officer who is trying to keep the peace and lower the body count.
Mackie and Boyega manage to resonate, lending gravitas to the proceedings. But most characters throughout remain flimsily rendered.
Bigelow and her regular collaborator, writer-producer Mark Boal, have created two of the most memorable films of the past 10 years: "The Hurt Locker," about adrenaline junkies on a bomb squad in Iraq, and "Zero Dark Thirty," the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the SEAL Team 6 raid in Pakistan.
Bigelow and Boal know how to masterfully drive pulsating plots and multilayered characters (The Hurt Locker won six Oscars including best picture and best director). But their narrative instincts stumble in "Detroit."
When you intercut archival footage with re-creations, you risk your scenes looking forced and staged. The repetitive behavior at the Algiers evolves into an arduous slog for the audience. A subsequent trial of the officers feels rushed.
The horrific events of that summer may have been better served by "Detroit: The Documentary."
