In 1967, Detroit, Michigan exploded in race riots along 12th Street. It was the most violent of the "Long hot summer" of race riots across the US. It reached its zenith with the Algiers Motel incident, in which various local police departments murdered three civilians and abused nine others. 2017's Detroit, released to mark the tragedy's 50th anniversary, recreates and explores its events through the eyes of several people who were there: primarily security guard Melvin Dismukes (John Boyega), up-and-coming singer Larry Reed (Algee Smith) and his bodyguard Fred Temple (Jacob Latimore), racist and corrupt white cop Philip Krauss (Will Poulter) and two young white women, Julie Anne Hysell (Hannah Murray) and Karen Malloy (Kaitlyn Dever), who happen to be staying at the same hotel as Larry and Fred.
Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal have done it again. After their brilliant, Oscar-winning one-two punch of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, they've crafted another knockout of suspense and power. Bigelow's direction is effectively immediate and impassioned in the action scenes, delicately restrained in the quieter ones and entirely objective overall, while Boal's screenplay very lucidly and methodically reconstructs and plots the events, as well as developing all these characters very patiently. It's also deliberately, genuinely infuriating, particularly thanks to Poulter's character; he is so hateful and callous I truly wanted to shoot him in the stomach and leave him there alone to die. The cast are all solid, especially Boyega and Latimore, Barry Ackroyd's cinematography (he's another long-time Bigelow collaborator) is strikingly efficient and William Goldenberg's and Harry Yoon's editing matches that. The only flaw I found here was James Newton Howard's quite derivative score. Nonetheless, Detroit is a scorcher of an action thriller whose themes are unfortunately equally relevant today. 9/10.
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