In her stark yet teeming new movie Detroit, director Kathryn Bigelow accomplishes something rare. Zooming in on a cataclysmic race riot that took place in the Motor City in July of 1967, Bigelow offers for white viewers an intimate sense of what it was like for black citizens to live in a city where they were routinely harassed and beaten down and made to feel like hated interlopers in their own land—and where nothing was ever done about these things. Parallels with present-day spasms of unpunished police criminality are something Bigelow lets us discern for ourselves, which is also rare—there’s little condescending moral guidance being dispensed here.
The movie is a bold project by a major director, and it offers much to applaud—mainly the craft with which it’s been made. But the picture is also weakened by substantial flaws, more about which in a moment, writes Kurt Loder in his latest review for Reason.
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