Amidst the chaos of the Detroit Rebellion, with the city under curfew and as the Michigan National Guard patrolled the streets, three young African American men were murdered at the Algiers Motel.
A police raid in Detroit in 1967 results in one of the largest race riots in United States history. The story is centred around the Algiers Motel incident, which occurred in Detroit, Michigan on July 25, 1967, during the racially charged 12th Street Riot. It involves the death of three black men and the brutal beatings of nine other people: seven black men and two white women.
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty), Detroit is a movie that grabs your attention right from the opening credits with their animated form bringing you some fact on history before bringing us to the moment shortly before the everything goes pear shaped.
We are nicely introduced to the characters of the movie as they are in an unlicensed club before it is raided by the police, this, in turn, causes things to spark up from the residents of Detroit as the spark is only the beginning of the fire of destruction and looting that later follows, as the national guard is called in to ease the situation, which in turn only really makes matter worse as does the moment of a cop that is really a little too gun happy!
Detroit – John Boyega
One thing that can be sure about Detroit is that is is a powerhouse of a movie, it has an amazing cast including John Boyega who many of us will now as Fin from Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens, as expected this is galaxy far far away from his role in Star Wars and he plays it with sheer skill, as the security guard that gets caught up in the shocking night of events.
As the terrible ordeal of the nine people being put through the hell by the three cops continues through the majority of the movie, the film is unnerving, shocking and at the same time a fascinating look at what these people went through because of a mistake made by one person trying to have some fun.
Detroit – Will Poulter
The main cop, played by Will Poulter, really had me on the edge of my seat, a character that I just wanted to scream at to stop what he was doing, not only from the physical violence that he was putting people through, but also the mental torcher that they had to suffer from the hands and the other two cops that were with him. It is also very shocking that they don’t just target the men, they also abuse the two white girls, played by Hannah Murray and Kaitlin Dever, simply because they are in a hotel with seven black men, one of which is a paratrooper played by Anthony Mackie (Falcon in Captain America: The Winter Soldier).
Kathryn Bigelow has yet again brought us a movie that not only has the audience glued to the screens, she has also brought us a movie that has us thinking about the situation as well as feeling for the characters that are being put through the nightmare simply because they are black and were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
For me this is a film that has to be seen, it is a moment in history that should be remembered and should never be repeated, we are now in the 21st-century people, isn’t it time that we all started to get along with each other.
Detroit was in UK Cinemas on the 25 August 2017, It heads to DVD and Blu-ray on the 8 January 2018.
Summary
Detroit is a powerful and emotional film that has stellar acting from the cast and is beautifully directed and put together, a movie not to be missed.
Karen Woodham is the founder and owner of the Blazing Minds. She is also a Cinema reviewer and works with RealD 3D reviewing the latest 3D releases and IMAX, she has also had several articles published in various publications including the first edition of SFW Magazine. In 2015 she became an Award Winning Blogger and also has her website listed as one of the UK’s Top 10 Film Blogs.
