Black Cinema Matters

PG Cooper's Vaguely Defined Movies About "The Black Experience"


Detroit (Kathryn Bigelow, 2017)



In the midst of ongoing protests against police brutality, it seemed appropriate to finally see Kathryn Bigelow's Detroit, a film which reenacts the 1967 "Algiers Motel Incident", wherein a bunch of cops terrorized and abused several Black residents and two young White women, leaving all victims battered and three Black men dead. Though the timing seemed right, in actual fact watching Detroit so close to the current protests was perhaps not for the best, in part because the viscious violence rings all the more urgent, and in part because the film's failings are a bit more apparent.

Indeed, Detroit is a tough movie to call. On the one hand, it's genuinely gripping to see Kathryn Bigelow apply her docudrama style to American streets rather than Middle Eastern war-zones. Detroit's recreation of history is viscerally rendered with skill and the performances are quite strong across the board. But on the other hand, the film's substance is a bit flimsy. Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal make clear that the police brutality they are depicting is horrific and unjust, but they also frame it in something of a "bad apples way". The film certainly shows a blue line of silence as well as how white juries treat such cases, but there is also a clear effort to show other law enforcement disgusted by the violent officers. I certainly don't think the movie is pro-cop (its ending is tinged with anger at the lack of justice dispensed), but Bigelow and Boal's typically apolitical perspective (that is to say, their inability to actively commit to a side) hinders Detroit's value as a portrait or critique of police brutality.

The pair's collaborations with The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty had a similar "just the facts" presentation which didn't exactly take a side, but those movies also had a much stronger perspective in their main characters. Conversely, it takes a long time for specific people to come to the fore in Detroit and there isn't really a main character. It feels like this should be security guard Melvin Dismukes story, as the character was not quite active in the violence but did little to actually stop it. There certainly seems a double consciousness to be explored with a Black man essentially working with the cops in this scenario of racist violence and while John Boyega's performance certainly plays into that tension, the film frequently abandons his perspective.

So where does this leave the film? Well, it does reenact its history with tremendous skill and with a collection of strong performances, but beneath the skill with which it was assembled, I'm not sure that Detroit actually has much to say. It isn't particularly incisive as a political critique and it isn't particularly rewarding as any sort of character study. Still, the core filmmaking here is impressive and as a look into an interesting (if deeply horrific) story in American history, Detroit certainly has value. Maybe that's enough, but I hope Bigelow's next film offers more.

C+