Review: "Detroit"

Political correctness is a sordid game I refuse to play. But even I admit I’m uncomfortable with a feature film about the 1967 Detroit riots with an almost entirely white creative team.

Director Kathryn Bigelow reteams with her “Zero Dark Thirty” and “The Hurt Locker” screenwriter, Mark Boal, in a film that attempts to look at the watershed civic unrest from the perspective of African-Americans who suffered at the hands of brutal police tactics. While most of the cast is black, the movie struggles to get over a sense of existing more to soothe white guilt than chronicle a racist tragedy.

Indeed, the first words we see or hear refer to the 1967 riots, also known as the 12th Street riots, as “the Detroit Rebellion.” I don’t know any serious historian who would use that term, which refers to an organized uprising designed to topple the power hierarchy, either by replacing the exiting government or splitting off from it.

Somehow, I doubt even the people who took to the streets, throwing rocks and setting storefronts on fire, would have called their actions a rebellion. They were simply enraged at being continually abused and stepped upon, and reached a point where they didn’t want to take it anymore.

I admired the film but got stuck on the fact this wasn’t the movie I was expecting. This is not a comprehensive look at the root causes of the unrest, the tactics undertaken by authorities to quell the violence, or the aftermath suffered by a community that struggles to this day to overcome that dark moment in history.

Indeed, if any moment can be pinpointed as the tipping point of when the great modern divide in America began -- between cities and suburbs, whites and those of color, blue and red -- the ’67 riot is it.

Although Bigelow and Boal start their story in the streets, this is really the tale of the Algiers Motel incident. Largely forgotten now amidst the bigger backdrop of the riots, this was the case of Detroit police officers, state police and national guardsmen detaining a group of young black men and two 18-year-old white women after gunshots were heard from the annex of the motel, a party spot a few blocks away from the mayhem.

Over the course of several hours, the suspects -- who were never charged with anything -- were beaten, abused, assaulted. It became clear the white officers were angered by white girls dallying with black boys. Three black men were fatally shot, with trumped-up excuses after the fact to justify self-defense by the officers. It was, as depicted in the film, essentially torture.

Anthony Mackie plays one of the victims, a recently discharged Army soldier, and Hannah Murray plays the mouthy girl. Algee Smith is Larry, lead singer of an up-and-coming Motown group called The Dramatics, who gets caught up along with his manager (Jacob Latimore).

Baby-faced Will Poulter is the central villain as the police officer directing the interrogation; earlier in the day we watched him pump two shotgun blasts into the back of a looter carrying groceries. Jay Reynor and Ben O’Toole are his wing men, dim and deliberate, respectively.

John Beyega is more or less the central character as Mel Dismukes, an African-American man working as a private security officer protecting a nearby business. He continually inserts himself into situations, using his uniform and officious demeanor to stave off some of the worst law enforcement abuses of black folks.

The film unequivocally presents Dismukes as a hero, when in fact he was charged with abusing the Algiers suspects along with the three police. All were found not guilty (though not, as the movie condenses, in the same trial).

Exactly what happened in the motel remains sketchy even today, though the movie carelessly presents its own version with crisp black-and-white lines, knowing this is what will be etched into the public consciousness.

From a narrative and technical standpoint, “Detroit” is a very well-crafted film that strings the audience’s emotions along with an expert hand. What’s less clear is who this movie is about, or for.

Review: "Zero Dark Thirty"

"Zero Dark Thirty" plays out like a TV crime procedural with a bigger budget and loftier aspirations. It almost has the tone of a documentary film, depicting the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden with little prejudice or embellishment.

What we end up with is something boasting an almost journalistic feel, portraying American national security personnel not as we'd to think they would be, but as they actually are. Which is to say: focused, fallible, and capable of both amazing heroism and gut-churning brutality.

Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal started to make a movie about the early search for bin Laden after 9/11, but then the terrorist leader was assassinated by U.S. troops in 2011, acting on information painstakingly gathered by the CIA. They quickly retooled to bring a more comprehensive tale, culminating in the high-tension raid on the compound in Pakistan where bin Laden had been living for several years.

I was very impressed with the attention to detail in "Zero Dark Thirty," and its lessons about the sort of warfare our country wages in the 21st century. It's one based not on nuclear missiles or big metal hardware, but tiny slivers of data gathered from thousands of sources. The challenge is less like finding a needle in a haystack than reassembling a mirror smashed into a million shards, without knowing the shape it had before being broken.

The film is not as emotionally engaging as I'd wished. Jessica Chastain does yeoman's work in portraying Maya, the one CIA investigator who does nothing for a decade but hunt bin Laden. The character has no internal motivations or external life beyond getting her man. It's not surprising that Maya is a composite of several real figures, since she has no real identity beyond her mission.

The story skips around in time and place, the first half depicting the early clues to bin Laden's disappearance from Afghanistan, taking us up to 2004. Then the trail goes cold, and the film picks up again four years later, when Maya stumbles across evidence of a high-level bin Laden courier who most of the other intelligence forces believe is already dead. She proves he's alive, and follows him straight to that dusty Pakistani compound.

In fictional movies about spycraft, the agents shown searching for evidence are also the ones who go out into the field and nab the bad guys. Here, it's clearly revealed that the snoops stay mostly behind their desks and have an uneasy relationship with the troops on the front lines. At one point, Maya has to practically beg a field commander to set up a surveillance net on the courier.

In the film's most controversial section, which is right at the beginning, a CIA interrogator named Dan (Jason Clarke, in a chilling performance) is shown employing "enhanced" methods against detainees, including waterboarding.

For a film that was accused of being controversial before it even finished production, "Zero Dark Thirty" is steadfastly neutral on the subject of torture. The interrogations are clearly depicted as brutal and dehumanizing, and it's hard to watch Americans carrying out these sorts of depraved actions. But the movie is also quite clear in showing how the information obtained in this way was critical to identifying the courier who led us to bin Laden.

Bigelow and Boal do not go in for big ethical quandaries and principled dilemmas, though. Maya, who is present but does not partake in the brutality, is repulsed by it but also does not hesitate to make use of the fruits it produces.

"Zero Dark Thirty" is an effective and expertly made film, but a more character-driven story would've added some flesh to the bones of a great, true story.

3.5 stars out of four

Catching up with "The Hurt Locker"

"The Hurt Locker" is possibly the best-reviewed film of 2009, and it finally opened in Indianapolis last Friday. Alas, no screening was made available to local critics.

I caught it today and it's a fine, fine film, though perhaps some reviewers have overinflated their opinions a bit. It happens all the time -- a few early influential critics in New York and LA rave about a film, it slowly creeps out to the marketplace, and more and more people feel compelled to pile on the bandwagon.

I'll certainly add it to my watch list for Top 10 movies of the year (if you're interested, the others currently on that list are "The Soloist," "Adventureland," "Moon," "Watchmen" and "Up"). But I wouldn't say it's at the top.

Perhaps the reason people are reacting to it with such enthusiasm is that "The Hurt Locker" is the first movie about the war in Iraq that doesn't seem to be playing politics or simply using the conflict as a backdrop to make a larger point. It's the "Platoon" for this generation -- a film about this war, these soldiers, their particular life-and-death challenges.

The story is set in 2004, the height of the insurgency and when sober minds on all sides of the political spectrum thought the whole thing might devolve into chaos. Into this blend of paranoia and fear steps Will James (Jeremy Renner, in a terrific performance), a bomb specialist who lives on the edge of insanity, and thrives on the adrenalin rush of risking his life every day to prevent things from blowing up.

Under his bed at barracks he keeps a large crate of electronic gizmos -- everyday stuff you could buy at Radio Shack, is how a fellow soldier puts it. These are parts of bombs that James has defused, ones that were especially challenging. He hates these contraptions designed to take life, but he also admires cleverly-designed bombs.

James is assigned to a bomb squad after their last specialist was killed in the film's opening sequence. (The dead bomb expert is played by Guy Pearce, one of several prominent actors who appear in small roles, including Ralph Fiennes, David Morse and Evangaline Lilly.) Anthony Mackie plays Sanborn, whose job is keep James safe, and is put off by his reckless ways. Some people would call the risks James constantly takes bravery, but Sanborn is the careful, seasoned soldier who knows they're just foolhardy.

The third member of the team is Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), a young soldier who's worried about whether he has the mettle to do what it takes in the field. Eldridge blames himself for his former bomb expert's death -- he saw the bomber waiting to set off the explosion with a cell phone, but failed to act -- and is receiving counseling from an Army psychiatrist. Eldridge challenges the doctor to come out in the field and witness what they have to put up with every day, which leads to tragic results.

The scenes that stick out most in audiences' minds will probably be the sequences that take place with James working in a special suit designed to protect him from a bomb blast. With its layers of Kevlar and helmet, it resembles an astronaut's gear. As James walks alone down dusty streets, checking piles of junk for bombs, it seems like he is traveling through an almost alien landscape. Director Kathryn Bigelow, a master of kinetic action scenes, keeps the audience on edge, expecting an attack or explosion from any angle.

For me, though, the scene that will stay with me is a firefight the bomb team gets into out in the middle of the desert. They meet up with some British intelligence officers and get pinned down by sniper fire. There's a long stretch where James and Sanborn are waiting to see if all the enemies are dead, with Sanborn manning a massive scoped rifle and James acting as his spotter. It's a reversal of their normal roles, where James is the showboat and Sanborn is there to back him up. James, choking on the heat and dust, asks for the last juice pack. Slowly and methodically, he opens it up and punctures the juice with a straw, then leans over and puts it to Sanborn's lips so he can drink without taking his eyes off the scope. These two soldiers have been at odds up till now, even exchanged blows, but it's in this moment that they truly become comrades.

"The Hurt Locker" is a tough, unsparing and brutally honest portrait of the war in Iraq. Let's hope there are more to come.

3.5 stars