eddie_baggins Out of all the film's that were largely ignored over the recent awards period rush of late last year and early this year, Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty follow-up Detroit is one name that stands out above the rest as perhaps the most curiously overlooked of the lot.Based on a true story, featuring an up and coming cast of recognisable faces and touching on hot-topic issues that remain prevalent and in the public conscious of America to this day, Detroit had all the hallmarks of a critical darling and awards season contender that instead faced a rather bleak box-office and audience reception despite many critics hailing Bigelow's realistic and confronting direction as some of last year's best filmmaking.There's certainly no faulting Bigelow's directional style that she harnessed with The Hurt Locker and established further with Zero Dark Thirty, as Detroit well and truly feels like a documentary as the talented director melds together archival like footage of the Detroit race riots of 1967 and her narrative take on a particularly shocking incident involving a collection of Detroit police officers and their treatment of a group of predominately black locals but there's something hugely amiss in Bigelow's scope and decision making.Firstly, Detroit is far too long at 140 minutes plus and while the film's opening half is strong and involving, an extended hotel segment that anchors the whole film is repetitive to the point of infuriation while the film's final 30 or so minutes is hugely misguided and uninvolving making Detroit feel far too often like a chore to sit through.The other key element to Detroit's disappointment is in its lack of audience involvement with the characters within Bigelow's feature.There's fine work by performers like John Boyega, Will Poulter and Jack Reynor but there's nothing tying us to these characters emotionally despite the trauma and experiences they are going through and while Poulter makes a mark as the detestable racist cop Krauss, all other performers feel like passengers to a narrative that is saying a lot, of which much is important to say, but delivering it in a heavy handed and increasingly uninvolving fashion as Detroit's promising and confronting beginning gets lost in its repetitive nature and overdrawn nature.Final Say - There's some great moments within Detroit and there's little doubt that Bigelow's particular style of filmmaking is in a league of its own when it clicks but with a failure to create an emotional core and with a an unnecessarily long and repetitive approach to one particular event, Detroit peters out too a mere flicker, instead of lighting a burning flame.2 ½ church choirs out of 5

austin0731 The riveting drama taking place in 1967 Detroit in the Algiers motel, this film stars various actors including John Boyega, Anthony Mackie, Will Poulter and even to my surprise, John Krasinski. This film takes place in the midst of racial tension and tension between the people and Detroit P.D. Depicting various scenes of violence, robbery and the city turning into a complete war zone, amongst the mess then focuses on the Algiers motel where all of the characters come together to set up the main story.The whole cast does a wonderful job depicting their individual characters, there is a backstory that can be seen through the dialogue, demeanor and expression of each character. The feeling that these people are real, genuine people and not characters in a movie. This strong sense of realism translates to this conflict amongst the characters which establishes the main drama of the film very well. The way that the film manages to have such great characters with individual story arcs makes them all the more sympathetic and their motives all the more clear and logical. Even in the case of Will Poulter's 'bad cop' you can understand where he is coming from and he shows certain levels of mercy and there is a very clear thought process that can be seen as an audience through the character's actions and dialogue. Detroit, manages to seem so real, almost to the extent of a documentary and that is precisely what makes the film so successful. Because it exuberates this sense of realism there are stakes that audiences can actually feel genuine emotions, dangers and intensity about. Detroit manages to retell a faithful tale of mistakes, fear, ignorance and pain in its 2 hours and 23 minutes runtime without ever feeling too long or dragged along.

justin-fencsak As the first film to be distributed and released by Annapurna, Detroit tells the story about what happened during the 1967 riots, specifically the one in Detroit that put the city on the map and drove the population down from its highs back when Detroit was the Motor City. The acting, direction, music, and pace of this movie is well done and should've gotten Oscar love.

Pjtaylor-96-138044 As a whole, 'Detroit (2017)' is too unfocused and too big for what it is trying to achieve, with the first act standing almost entirely alone from the following two and feeling sort of superfluous in the overall narrative. The central set-piece - and even, to a lesser extent, its much slower aftermath - is compelling, vigorous stuff that's unrelenting in its tension and urgency, though. It never just feels like one race against another, but rather humans placed in a situation where good and evil are shown in shades of grey. If you're even remotely human, the brutality and oppression of the piece will make your blood boil and the flick pulls no punches when it comes to the injustice on display. The lack of any comeuppance almost feels like a lack of narrative closure - you truly want to see the perpetrators punished, and this alone is an achievement - but instead it simply emulates the messy and unfulfilling way that life often works. While the story mightn't be entirely accurate to the real-life scenario (the events of which were never accurately established in court), it does work as an examination of what could have happened in a terrible situation that took the lives of three young men, one which is still scarily relevant today. 7/10