DETROIT Review

If you thought the sound design in Dunkirk was crazy effective wait until you get a load of Kathryn Bigelow's Detroit. That isn't to say one is more effective than the other, but both utilize their environments and the sounds that resonate most within those environments to help push the visceral experience of both films to the next level. A level that indeed truly transcends the space and time of where one might be viewing the film and places you among the riots of the summer of 1967 where fear, uncertainty, and chaos ran rampant. I open with such a statement not to emphasize the technical aspects over everything else in a film as important and timely as Detroit so as to draw attention away from the tough and difficult subject matter at hand, but more to begin a dialogue about why the movie itself becomes equally effective and affecting. It is through this portal of sound, of genuine gun shot smatterings that ring out at any given point in the movie and make you feel not only as if you’re in the room with these characters, but are then also inherently placed in the headspace of someone such as Larry Reed (portrayed by newcomer Algee Smith), a singer and aspiring musician who just so happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is interesting, seeing how writer Mark Boal’s (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty) screenplay brings several strands of characters, historical situations, and themes together into a single, encapsulating experience, but while we don’t meet Larry Reed until just prior to the events that the film dedicates its biggest chunk of time to it is his arc that we become most enamored with in many ways due largely to the fact he faces a wider variety of obstacles in terms of difficult choices as well as attempting to comprehend a life that seemingly has everything he ever hoped for stripped away in the matter of a handful of hours. That also said, Detroit is not about a single character, but more it is about how far away we still are from things being easy even if it would seem we’ve overcome so much in the fifty years since these infamous riots. As a piece of entertainment, Bigelow’s film isn’t something to be recommended for the experience which it entails, but rather because it is a heavy experience that needs to be known about and acknowledged. Detroit is about acknowledgment and about asking not why this happened in the past-we know why it happened-but rather if we’re doing today what we need to be doing in order to prevent as much from happening again. Detroit is a reminder we’re not doing as well as we should be in case you couldn’t tell already.

First Trailer for Kathryn Bigelow's DETROIT

The first trailer for Oscar-winner Kathryn Bigelow’s (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty) highly anticipated new film, Detroit, has premiered via Annapurna Pictures. The film, which was written by Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker), chronicles the Detroit riots of 1967. The riots are historically known to have been initiated by a police raid of an unlicensed bar in the city’s Near West Side when confrontations turned violent, ultimately resulting in the deaths of thirty-nine people and leaving hundreds wounded as the riots went on for five days. Bigelow and Boal have seemingly approached this event with the idea of telling several different accounts that occurred over the course of the five days in order to paint a full picture of what happened, why it happened, and how those on either side of the law were forced to handle themselves. In typical Bigelow fashion the film seemingly holds a number of tense moments while the ensemble cast as led by The Force Awakens' John Boyega are seemingly giving top notch performances to only accentuate that suspense further. Though not overly familiar with the details of the events that happened in Detroit that summer the tagline for the film, as shown at the end of the clip, hints that the film will paint a picture from a perspective most history books aren't accustomed to telling. I'm anxious not only to see what a talented filmmaker like Bigelow does with such material, but also the kinds of conversations it creates given the material couldn't be more relevant or a more timely reminder for the American conscience. The remainder of the ensemble cast includes Chris Chalk, Nathan Davis Jr., Kaitlyn Dever, Austin Hébert, Joseph David-Jones, Malcolm David Kelley, John Krasinski, Jacob Latimore, Anthony Mackie, Jason Mitchell, Hannah Murray, Ben O’Toole, Will Poulter, Jack Reynor, Algee Smith, Peyton Alex Smith, Jeremy Strong, Ephraim Sykes, and Leon Thomas III. Detroit opens in theaters on August 4th.