Movie Review: Detroit

Detroit *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow.

Written by: Mark Boal.                             

Starring: John Boyega (Dismukes), Will Poulter (Krauss), Algee Smith (Larry), Jacob Latimore (Fred), Jason Mitchell (Carl), Hannah Murray (Julie), Jack Reynor (Demens), Kaitlyn Dever (Karen), Ben O'Toole (Flynn), John Krasinski (Attorney Auerbach), Anthony Mackie (Greene), Nathan Davis Jr. (Aubrey), Peyton 'Alex' Smith (Lee), Malcolm David Kelley (Michael), Joseph David-Jones (Morris), Laz Alonso (Conyers), Ephraim Sykes (Jimmy), Leon Thomas III (Darryl), Gbenga Akinnagbe (Aubrey Pollard Sr.), Miguel Pimentel (Malcolm).

 

T

he centerpiece section of Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit is both the reason to see the film, and the reason why some viewers won’t want to. It probably lasts for about half the film’s 2 hour and 25 minute runtime, after a section that sets up what led there, and before a section about the aftermath, and is the type of filmmaking Bigelow does best – tense, edge of your seat filmmaking, that puts the audience there, right alongside its characters and makes them sit in their discomfort. It’s a sequence that viewers will want to stop – it’s hard to sit through, hard to shake, and yet we are powerless to stop. This, of course, is the point of this sequence – as many of the characters in this sequence are either powerless to stop it themselves, or at least think they are, because they don’t. I completely and totally understand the reaction of some critics – many of whom are black – who think Bigelow is just exploiting black pain for her movie and really do not want to sit through more scenes of black people being tormented by police officers. They have argued that the film isn’t for them – and they may well be right. Maybe the film is for white people – the kind of white people we see in Jordan Peele’s brilliant Get Out, who think one think and get comforted with the reality. Perhaps that’s why in so much of the movie outside this tense middle section of the film, so much of the dialogue is awkward and stilted, and feels like screenwriter Mark Boal and Bigelow are trying – way too hard – to draw direct parallels to the racial tension in America today, and how little really has changed in the 50 years since the events depicted in Detroit took place.

 

That centerpiece sequence takes place at the Algiers Motel in Detroit, in the summer of 1967, in the middle of Detroit Riots or Detroit Rebellion (depending on the language you choose to use). This was far from the first racially motivate riots that broke out in America in the 1960s. The films opens with what kicked off the unrest – basically the straw that broke the camel’s back – when cops raided an unlicensed after hours drinking club in the black part of town. Those not arrested, got pissed, and tensions boiled over – and riots broke out. A few days into those riots, the National Guard has been called in. A group at the Algiers motel – mostly black, but with two white girls – are hanging out in the Annex of the motel – and one of them thinks it will be funny to fire off his starts pistol in the direction of the amassing National Guard and police officers. They come to the motel, and want answers – and are willing to do anything to get them. It has already been established that their leader – Krauss (Will Poulter) is a violent, racist – we see him shoot an unarmed black man in the back for stealing groceries, and then having the audacity of running away (he’s basically given a warning, and sent back to work). He kills one of the men right away – and lines the rest up against the wall. Through the hours and hours that follow, he and his cohorts will “play a game” with the rest of them to get answers. One by one, they take the rest of them into another room, and “pretend” to shoot them, to get the rest to talk. Until one of them doesn’t pretend anymore. Killing one of them – as they were running away – may be okay, but two? By the end of the night, another black man will be dead as well.

 

This centerpiece section is brilliantly directed by Bigelow, and does a great job of establishing the various characters through their actions. Krauss is the leader – the man who can bully the rest of the cops to go along with him, speaking in “coded” language about “them” and about how they are likely are guilty of “something”. His two fellow officers Demens (Jack Reynor) and Flynn (Ben O’Toole) – are not as overtly racist or sadistic as Krauss – but they go right along with everything. There’s also a National Guardsman there, who plays along up to a point, and then leaves. And there is also Dismukes (John Boyega) – a black security guard who tags along, in the hopes of keeping things under control, although he is clearly unable to do so. The black men tortured by the cops include a Vietnam war vet (Anthony Mackie) who is smart and disciplined enough to realize fighting back will get him nowhere, two members of a musical group – Larry and Fred (Algee Smith and Jacob Latimore) who were just trying to lay low until the heat died down of the riots, and got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. There’s also Carl (Jason Mitchell) – who earlier breaks down the fear black people experience that white people do not understand. The two white girls who are there (Hannah Murray and Kaitlyn Dever) – set off the cops as much as the black men do, simply for being with them. The cops immediately assume they must be prostitutes, and want to know why they sleep with blacks, but not “nice” white guys like them. The sequence is brutally intense and unrelenting. You sit and watch, and want to step in, want it to end, and it just keeps going. Like her previous two films – The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty (also written by Boal) – Bigelow wants her audience on edge the whole time, constantly on the brink of going over.

 

Everything that surrounds this brilliantly, brutally effective sequence is not nearly as effective. Part of that is just the inevitable boring parts of having to set everything up – this is a big movie, with a lot of cast members, and movie parts, and requires a certain degree of exposition to place it in context (the opening, with intertitles over paintings is more effective than the other earlier scenes). But much of it seems to Boal and Bigelow trying to draw parallels to then and today – using language that would sound awkward now, but even stranger in the context of 1967 – the movie almost goes out of its way to make sure you know that not all cops are racist, but tries (less successfully) to paint them as part of a larger system of institutional racism, that allows and excuses their behavior.

 

A film like Detroit is clearly meant to make its audience uneasy – which it does, and at times brilliantly so. At other times though, it makes them uneasy in another way – because it is trying so hard to draw connections to today, and trying so hard to be both fair to everyone, and yet not excuse any of them either. This has been Bigelow and Boal’s approach in their last three films – and honestly, it worked better in The Hurt Locker and (especially) Zero Dark Thirty than it does in Detroit. I think they are trying to sidestep the traps in films like this – films that document historical traumas that allow audiences to feel comfortable, because as horrible as they are, they can be relegated to the past. Bigelow and Boal try very hard to make sure you do not forget that these cannot be so easily relegated. They aren’t entirely successful – but I admire the effort.

Movie Review: Zero Dark Thirty

Zero Dark Thirty
Directed by:  Kathryn Bigelow.
Written by: Mark Boal.
Starring: Jessica Chastain (Maya), Jason Clarke (Dan), Mark Strong (George), Jennifer Ehle (Jessica), Kyle Chandler (Joseph Bradley), Mark Duplass (Steve), James Gandolfini (C.I.A. Director), Stephen Dillane (National Security Advisor), John Schwab (Deputy National Security Advisor), Édgar Ramírez (Larry from Ground Branch), Reda Kateb (Ammar), Harold Perrineau (Jack), Fares Fares (Hakim), Yoav Levi (Abu Faraj al-Libbi), Fredric Lehne (The Wolf), Tushaar Mehra (Abu Ahmed), Joel Edgerton (Patrick - Squadron Team Leader), Chris Pratt (Justin – DEVGRU), Taylor Kinney (Jared – DEVGRU), Callan Mulvey (Saber – DEVGRU), Siaosi Fonua (Henry – DEVGRU), Phil Somerville (Phil – DEVGRU), Nash Edgerton (Nate - DEVGRU EOD), Mike Colter (Mike – DEVGRU).

Zero Dark Thirty opens not with images of 9/11 but with only the sounds of 9/11 – desperate phone calls from people saying goodbye, begging for help that they know will never come. In many ways this brief, imageless segment is more effective a representation of 9/11 than the few movies that have dealt with the tragedy in a more direct way in the years since. Those images are already burned into our collective memories – we don’t need to see them again. These sounds bring the events of that day roaring back – and is perhaps the most effective opening sequence you could ask for.

The following two and half hours of Zero Dark Thirty is about the CIA’s efforts to track down and kill Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind responsible for that tragedy. The movie focuses its attention of Maya (Jessica Chastain), a CIA agent who will simply not let go until she has caught Bin Laden. We see her, and other CIA agents, as they use “enhanced interrogation methods” on detainees, and any delusions you have about whether or not this is torture will fly out the window fairly quickly. It is torture. And it is brutal. Eventually the interrogations lead to a name – Abu Ahmed – who the CIA is told is a courier for a man named Faraj, a key financier for Al Qaeda. Abu Ahmed is the man who is responsible for transferring messages back and forth from Faraj to Bin Laden. And may be the only person who really knows where the Al Qaeda leader is hiding. Maya doggedly pursues this lead for years – refusing to give up on it when everyone else in the CIA believes it to be a dead end. But since we know how the movie will end, we also know that Maya is right.

Zero Dark Thirty does many things – all of them well. On one hand, it is a portrait of a woman who becomes obsessed with putting the pieces of a puzzle together. We’ve seen this in a few great movies in the last few years – David Fincher’s Zodiac springs to mind. Because like Robert Graysmith in that film, who thinks he has all the pieces of the puzzle to figure out who Zodiac is but cannot quite make them fit, Maya is similarly driven and obsessed. Both are lonely characters – Graysmith’s family being literally replaced around the dinner table by boxes and boxes of paper – and Maya doesn’t even have a family to begin with. When one character (Jennifer Ehle, wonderfully sympathetic) asks her if she has is sleeping with anyone on base, Maya bluntly responds “I’m not the girl who fucks” – Maya is driven solely by her obsession. There is nothing else in her life. And it’s to Chastain’s credit that she makes Maya’s obsession seem real and turns Maya into a real character instead of the robot she could have seemed. It really is one of the very best performances of 2012.

The other great performance in Zero Dark Thirty is by Jason Clarke, who plays Dan, who heads up the “detainee” program – and is the one who is principally responsible for all the “enhanced interrogation”. Dan is a likable guy – when he’s not interrogating people, which is when he becomes downright scary. “You lie to me, and I’m gonna hurt you” he tells the detainees – and they believe him, because he’s more than willing to back up his claim. Clarke, poised to become a star thanks to great performances here and earlier this year in Lawless (not to mention several high profile upcoming releases) makes Dan into an intelligent, thoughtful, yet brutal human being.

And these two performances (and the one by Ehle) are key because they add the human element to what could have “just” been an expertly crafted procedural. And make no mistake, this is an expertly crafted film. Mark Boal’s well-researched screenplay takes you through, one step at a time, what happened, and what led to that night when Bin Laden was killed. And Kathryn Bigelow’s direction is even sharper here than it was in her Oscar winning The Hurt Locker, especially in that final night time raid, which is the most suspenseful sequence of the year, even though we know how it turns out. Boal and Bigelow have once again crafted a timely, important movie – one that leaves politics aside, for the most part, and allows the audience to make up their own mind.

Which, unfortunately, brings me to the made up “controversy” that surrounds the film. Do I think that Zero Dark Thirty endorses torture? No, I don’t. I think it shows torture, without judgment, and allows the characters who commit it to explain their actions. But showing something does not equal endorsing it. Do you really need to be told that torture is wrong? Can you honestly sit there and watch what happens to these detainees and not think that it shouldn’t be done to another human being? As for the question about the movie saying that torture was essential to capturing Bin Laden, and the claims of politicians and pundits saying it wasn’t, I have to wonder what they were watching. It is true that the first person in the film who mentions the name of the courier, which will eventually lead to Bin Laden, was subjected to “enhanced interrogation methods”. It is also true that while he is being enhancely interrogated, he doesn’t reveal the name of the courier – he only does that later, when they are being nice to him, and trying to build up trust. Besides, any movie that is about the War on Terror that doesn’t include torture would be a needless whitewash of history. Whether you like it or not, America engaged in torture for a time to try to win the War on Terror. Zero Dark Thirty faces this head-on.

I’m sorry I even had to include the above paragraph in this review of one of the best films of the year. This is a film that intelligent people will be able to go into and make up their own minds – and the whole time, they will also be entertained by a tight thriller made my filmmakers at the top of their game. Believe the buzz – Zero Dark Thirty is a masterwork.

Movie Review: The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker ****
Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow.
Written By: Mark Boal.
Starring: Jeremy Renner (Staff Sergeant William James), Anthony Mackie (Sergeant JT Sanborn), Brian Geraghty (Specialist Owen Eldridge), Guy Pearce (Sergeant Matt Thompson), Ralph Fiennes (Contractor Team Leader), David Morse (Colonel Reed).

Iraq war movies have not been all that popular in the last few tears. Bombarded by information on the news everyday, people have decided that they do not want to go see the same things when they go to the movies. It hasn’t helped that many of these movies were not very good, or were mainly political diatribes, offering simplistic (although often correct, at least in my opinion) against the Bush Administration.

I do not know if The Hurt Locker is going to change all of that, but it should. It is easily the best movie made about the war in Iraq so far, and it does so by almost entirely taking politics out of the equation. To the soldiers in this movie, it doesn’t matter why they were sent to Iraq to fight, it just matters that they are there, and have to do their best to get through it.

The movie centers a three soldiers, who job it is to defuse bombs, mainly crudely made bombs hidden in roadways and in cars, meant to surprise and kill American soldiers. The movie opens with a dynamic sequence of these men defusing one such bomb. Things go wrong, as they seem to often do in this line of work, that the team needs a new leader. This is when William James (Jeremy Renner) shows up.

James is a cowboy, a man who doesn’t seem to care about his own personal safety, and more concerning to his teammates, anyone’s else either. He is reckless, he doesn’t listen to his spotters, and barges in headfirst into situations in which they feel require a more delicate touch. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) doesn’t much like James. He has 39 days left in his tour before he gets to go home, and he wants to live to see it. He is all business, good at his job, and doesn’t appreciate James’ recklessness, and it puts him in danger as well. The third member of the team is Eldridge (Brian Geraghty). Eldridge tries to act tough to impress James and Sanborn, but underneath he’s just a scared young man who doesn’t belong in the war.

While in the broad strokes, these characters seem like the war movie clichés, writer Mark Boal uses them to define three different types of soldiers. In James, they have the man who is good at his job, but enjoys it too much. He is an adrenaline junkie, who gets off on the constant danger he is putting himself in. He has a wife and child back home, who he says he loves, but he feels more connection to the bombs he defuses (he keeps parts of the bombs in a box under his bed). He is a good soldier, but perhaps he shouldn’t be there at all. Jeremy Renner, who has been delivering one strong performance after another for a few years now, gives a great performance, which perfectly captures this man. What makes it all the scarier is that although we understand that James is a man who probably should not be Iraq in the first place – because his reckless is likely to get someone killed at some point – we also realize that the Army needs guys like him. Who else but an adrenaline junkie would ever sign up to defuse bombs in the first place? Sanborn is an intelligent man, who is very good at his job, but doesn’t much like it. He is there to do a job, and when he’s done, he’ll go home and deal with what he’s seen. Anthony Mackie gives subtle shades to his line readings, many of which are barking out orders that slowly allows you to see Sanborn, to get under his skin. He is the least transparent of the three men, but perhaps the most complex. Finally Brian Geraghty gives a fine performance as the soldier who is neither very good at his job, nor really enjoys it. He tries hard, and wants to be a good soldier, but he just isn’t cut out for it.

But despite how strong the writing and acting in the movie are (and they are expert level), the real star of the movie is director Kathryn Bigelow. Bigelow has been directing movies about wounded men for her entire career, but I don’t think she has ever directed a movie this good before. It is an almost unbearably intense movie, with multiple action sequences that in a lesser movie would be the centerpiece. But these sequences are not the non-stop action and blood of most war movies, but rather slow, intense build-ups that last for a minutes on end. The style of the movie is expert, but never goes over the top (okay, perhaps she does have one too many slow motion sequences). She also knows how to use celebrity cameos effectively. There are three in the film, but they never distract from the main characters. They throw the audience off track, because she uses them in offbeat ways.

The Hurt Locker is a legitimately great film, the first narrative film about the war in Iraq that could rightly be described as such. Whether anyone goes to see it or not, remains to be seen. But when the book is written on Iraq movies in the future, and trust me there will be a few written about them, The Hurt Locker is going to be remembered.