You think we're bluffing? We don't bluff!

Detroit

(2017)

(SPOILERS) A film about black people made by white people for white people. That’s the common charge levelled at Detroit, Kathryn Bigelow’s account of the 1967 Algier Motel incident. And it’s difficult to argue against the validity of the assertion. One might also add, “the majority of whom aren’t going to be interested in seeing it anyway, unless it gets some Oscar buzz, and even then”. Then, one might similarly doubt who Bigelow’s last few movies were for, exactly, since they seemed primarily designed to cement her status as a serious, politically-astute filmmaker who now shirks all that genre nonsense of her less socially-conscious days. More’s the pity. Is Detroit any good? It’s well made, as technically accomplished as everything she’s done, and electrically tense during its central section, but it isn’t so much an “angry” film (as some cheerleaders have suggested) as the result of a dispassionate craftsperson tackling combustive subject matter. It betrays exactly the eye of someone aware of the prestige status they now occupy.

I wasn’t a fan of Zero Dark Thirty, a picture precision-designed to invade the consciousness as an official account – after all, we’re unlikely ever to get to see otherwise, any more than that elusively disposed of body – with all the dubious propaganda issues that entails (bring along just a smidge of controversy, to make it seem like you aren’t completely wagging your tail). The Hurt Locker was better, by virtue of still having its finger on the dramatics of the unabashed set piece, but it nevertheless didn’t warrant its Oscar glory, any more than K-19: The Widowmaker deserved to be dismissed out of hand, back before she was flavour of the month.

Detroit exhibits the casual virtuosity of a filmmaker who knows exactly what they’re doing technically – handheld camera that never becomes disorientating or distracting is used throughout, the sound design is inescapably oppressive – but it also betrays her “baser” instincts. Bigelow is a naturally kinetic director, her inclination is to excite her audience, and that’s both a boon to the incredibly taut proceedings that occur during the extended middle section of the picture, in the motel, and a drawback, because it highlights that’s all she’s really achieving, all she’s really adept at. There’s no outrage in her lens, merely calculation.

Indeed, many a review has referred to Detroit as a horror movie. Is that really what this ought to be, though? “Punched up” in terms of tightening the screws of tension. Is that a suitable way to tell the story, if you feel the need to dramatise it? Is that the key to the casting of (the very good) Will Poulter, making the most of a naturally ghoulish visage to essay an unmitigated horror genre villain (aside from a wrong-footing line in his first scene, where refers to trying to a desire to “help these people”, moments before giving chase to a looter with a bag full of stolen groceries and shooting him in the back)? I guess it depends what you’re looking for from a picture. It’s very easy to push a button that elicits indignation when you’re working with the tools of an average home invasion thriller. What you expect more of is insight.

There’s also the problem of Detroit as a story, though. If the meat is the mid-section in the Algiers, Bigelow has trouble with the rest of her sandwich. And problems with the focus on her protagonists too. The opening act seems to wander aimlessly at first, setting up incidents and encounters that coalesce into the characters we will follow into the motel (or, at least, some of them). That’s a smart strategy in eliciting empathy and attachment (or lack thereof in the case of Poulter’s Krauss and his accomplices; the picture is almost ineptly apologetic in showing other cops to be okay guys, such as the superior who labels Krauss a racist, or the patrolman who is beside himself with concern for the half-beaten-to-death Larry Reed).

So why then is the instantly most engaging character one we don’t meet until we’re in the Motel, Anthony Mackie’s veteran Greene? In particular, the focus on the arc of Reed (Algee Smith), no doubt because it represents most strikingly aspirations dashed and destroyed by that fateful night (he could have been the next big thing with The Dramatics, until it all went to hell) is weak and hackneyed, Mark Boal’s screenplay intent on using obvious melodramatic devices (Reed gets up on stage to deliver a few verses to an evacuated auditorium) to indicate this is the last occasion he’ll be doing such a thing.

John Boyega is solid in an undernourished role as security guard Melvin Dismukes, attempting to tread a delicate line of peace-making and both self and general preservation (an account from at least one of the victims has Dismukes handing out beatings himself) but being particularly poorly served in the almost perfunctory trial-come-coda, even to the extent it isn’t immediately clear he is on trial (we see him arrested and then locked up, but then the attention shifts entirely to the bad cops). Also strong are the white girls (Hannah Murray of Game of Thrones and Kaitlyn Denver of Justified) whose mere presence inflames the cops’ wrath, Jason Mitchell (previously memorable as Easy-E in Straight Outta Compton) as Carl, whose foolhardy flourishing of a starter pistol initiates the convergence on the Motel, and Gbenga Akkinnagbe (The Wire) as the grieving father of one of the victims.

The animated introduction concerning The Great Migration seems to float above the subsequent film, failing to inform or effectively contextualise the whole, as if it came after the fact in brainstorming how to position a picture relying on the tools of immediacy and the moment. As a result, the riots appear to come out of nowhere, providing an excuse for only a lot of looting and abandon, with little grounding of the pervading political atmosphere. Boal and Bigelow know the part of the story they want to tell in Detroit, the part that’s a quick fix in dramatic terms, but they’re unable to get to grips with the bookends, which ought to have held equal weight – greater even – if they were to prove their best intentions.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

Mondo bizarro. No offence man, but you’re in way over your head.

The X-Files 8.7: Via Negativa I wasn’t as down on the last couple of seasons of The X-Files as most seemed to be. For me, the mythology arc walked off a cliff somewhere around the first movie, with only the occasional glimmer of something worthwhile after that. So the fact that the show was tripping over itself with super soldiers and Mulder’s abduction/his and Scully’s baby (although we all now know it wasn’t, sheesh ), anything to stretch itself beyond breaking point in the vain hope viewers would carry on dangling, didn’t really make much odds. Of course, it finally snapped with the wretched main arc when the show returned, although the writing was truly on the wall with Season 9 finale The Truth . For the most part, though, I found 8 and 9 more watchable than, say 5 or 7. They came up with their fair share of engaging standalones, one of which I remembered to be Via Negativa .

You have done well to keep so much hair, when so many’s after it.

Jeremiah Johnson (1972) (SPOILERS) Hitherto, I was most familiar with Jeremiah Johnson in the form of a popular animated gif of beardy Robert Redford smiling and nodding in slow zoom close up (a moment that is every bit as cheesy in the film as it is in the gif). For whatever reason, I hadn’t mustered the enthusiasm to check out the 1970s’ The Revenant until now (well, beard-wise, at any rate). It’s easy to distinguish the different personalities at work in the movie. The John Milius one – the (mythic) man against the mythic landscape; the likeably accentuated, semi-poetic dialogue – versus the more naturalistic approach favoured by director Sydney Pollack and star Redford. The fusion of the two makes for a very watchable, if undeniably languorous picture. It was evidently an influence on Dances with Wolves in some respects, although that Best Picture Oscar winner is at greater pains to summon a more sensitive portrayal of Native Americans (and thus, perversely, at times a more patr

You’re a disgrace, sir... Weren’t you at Harrow?

Our Man in Marrakesh aka Bang! Bang! You’re Dead (1966) (SPOILERS) I hadn’t seen this one in more than three decades, and I had in mind that it was a decent spy spoof, well populated with a selection of stalwart British character actors in supporting roles. Well, I had the last bit right. I wasn’t aware this came from the stable of producer Harry Alan Towers, less still of his pedigree, or lack thereof, as a sort of British Roger Corman (he tried his hand at Star Wars with The Shape of Things to Come and Conan the Barbarian with Gor , for example). More legitimately, if you wish to call it that, he was responsible for the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu flicks. Our Man in Marrakesh – riffing overtly on Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana in title – seems to have in mind the then popular spy genre and its burgeoning spoofs, but it’s unsure which it is; too lightweight to work as a thriller and too light on laughs to elicit a chuckle.

You know what I sometimes wish? I sometimes wish I were ordinary like you. Ordinary and dead like all the others.

Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) (SPOILERS) Bryan Forbes’ adaptation of Mark McShane’s 1961’s novel has been much acclaimed. It boasts a distinctive storyline and effective performances from its leads, accompanied by effective black-and-white cinematography from Gerry Turpin and a suitably atmospheric score from John Barry. I’m not sure Forbes makes the most of the material, however, as he underlines Séance on a Wet Afternoon ’s inherently theatrical qualities at the expense of its filmic potential.

I tell you, it saw me! The hanged man’s asphyx saw me!

The Asphyx (1972) (SPOILERS) There was such a welter of British horror from the mid 60s to mid 70s, even leaving aside the Hammers and Amicuses, that it’s easy to lose track of them in the shuffle. This one, the sole directorial effort of Peter Newbrook (a cameraman for David Lean, then a cinematographer), has a strong premise and a decent cast, but it stumbles somewhat when it comes to taking that premise any place interesting. On the plus side, it largely eschews the grue. On the minus, directing clearly wasn’t Newbrook’s forte, and even aided by industry stalwart cinematographer Freddie Young (also a go-to for Lean), The Aspyhx is stylistically rather flat.

A ship is the finest nursery in the world.

A High Wind in Jamaica (1965) (SPOILERS) An odd one, this, as if Disney were remaking The Swiss Family Robinson for adults. One might perhaps have imagined the Mouse House producing it during their “Dark Disney” phase. But even then, toned down. After all, kids kidnapped by pirates sounds like an evergreen premise for boy’s own adventuring (more girl’s own here). The reality of Alexander Mackendrick’s film is decidedly antithetical to that; there’s a lingering feeling, despite A High Wind in Jamaica ’s pirates largely observing their distance, that things could turn rather nasty (and indeed, if Richard Hughes’ 1929 novel had been followed to the letter, they would have more explicitly).

The best thing in the world for the inside of a man or a woman is the outside of a horse.

Marnie (1964) (SPOILERS) Hitch in a creative ditch. If you’ve read my Vertigo review, you’ll know I admired rather than really liked the picture many fete as his greatest work. Marnie is, in many ways, a redux, in the way De Palma kept repeating himself in the early 80s only significantly less delirious and… well, compelling. While Marnie succeeds in commanding the attention fitfully, it’s usually for the wrong reasons. And Hitch, digging his heels in as he strives to fashion a star against public disinterest – he failed to persuade Grace Kelly out of retirement for Marnie Rutland – comes entirely adrift with his leads.

My Doggett would have called that crazy.

The X-Files 9.4: 4-D I get the impression no one much liked Agent Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish), but I felt, for all the sub-Counsellor Troi, empath twiddling that dogged her characterisation, she was a mostly positive addition to the series’ last two years (of its main run). Undoubtedly, pairing her with Doggett, in anticipation of Gillian Anderson exiting just as David Duchovny had – you rewatch these seasons and you wonder where her head was at in hanging on – made for aggressively facile gender-swapped conflict positions on any given assignment. And generally, I’d have been more interested in seeing how two individuals sympathetic to the cause – her and Mulder – might have got on. Nevertheless, in an episode like 4-D you get her character, and Doggett’s, at probably their best mutual showing.

Isn’t it true, it’s easier to be a holy man on the top of a mountain?

The Razor’s Edge (1984) (SPOILERS) I’d hadn’t so much a hankering as an idle interest in finally getting round to seeing Bill Murray’s passion project. Partly because it seemed like such an odd fit. And partly because passion isn’t something you tend to associate with any Murray movie project, involving as it usually does laidback deadpan. Murray, at nigh-on peak fame – only cemented by the movie he agreed to make to make this movie – embarks on a serious-acting-chops dramatic project, an adaptation of W Somerset Maugham’s story of one man’s journey of spiritual self-discovery. It should at least be interesting, shouldn’t it? A real curio? Alas, not. The Razor’s Edge is desperately turgid.

Just wait. They’ll start listing side effects like the credits at the end of a movie.

Contagion (2011) (SPOILERS) The plandemic saw Contagion ’s stock soar, which isn’t something that happens too often to a Steven Soderbergh movie. His ostensibly liberal outlook has hitherto found him on the side of the little people (class action suits) and interrogating the drugs trade while scrupulously avoiding institutional connivance (unless it’s Mexican institutional connivance). More recently, The Laundromat ’s Panama Papers puff piece fell fall flat on its face in attempting broad, knowing satire (in some respects, this is curious, as The Informant! is one of Soderbergh’s better-judged films, perhaps because it makes no bones about its maker’s indifference towards its characters). There’s no dilution involved with Contagion , however. It amounts to a bare-faced propaganda piece, serving to emphasise that the indie-minded director is Hollywood establishment through and through. This is a picture that can comfortably sit alongside any given Tinseltown handwringing over the Wa

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog