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Wednesday, June 13, 2018

Detroit (2017)

This was a brutal movie that was definitely an hour too long.  That is a characteristic of Katheryn Bigelow's films, but this one takes brutality to an unbearable level without teaching us anything about new about racism.
The film builds up to an extended sequence based on a real event, a police raid at the Algiers Motel in 1967 Detroit that resulted in the deaths of three young black men and the beatings of nine other people, including two white women. There is a raggedness to the narrative as it opens, giving a portrait of the civil unrest and riots that dominated Detroit at the time before placing the variety of characters introduced into a powder keg of a situation at the Algiers Motel. After the blood has dried and scars began to heal for the survivors, the narrative dashes through the investigation, trial, and aftermath of that night.  It would be ok if it was an hour shorter, but it is not.

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