Detroit Reviews

Since I kept hearing some interesting things about this flick and since I have a weak spot for Kathryn Bigelow’s work, I was quite eager to check this flick. Well, following the acclaimed ‘The Hurt Locker’ and ‘Zero Dark Thirty’, Bigelow delivered another strong historical politically charged thriller and the end-result was once again pretty impressive. Indeed, you might wonder if a white woman was the best choice for this material but the whole thing still looked great. Above all, it was quite gritty and realistic and you could get a decent feeling on what it must have been liked back then in Detroit. To be honest, I had my doubts about the running time though. It is not really that it was too long but, from the moment they started to move the action to the infamous Algiers Motel, the pacing slowed down so drastically. In fact, the movie didn’t move forward for maybe 50 minutes and I wasn’t sure if it was really the right decision. I mean, on one hand, it was dreadful to see and you can only imagine how traumatizing it must have been for the survivors so it was effective. On the other hand, I can’t help wondering if it would have worked just as well with spending slightly less running time on these specific events. Furthermore, in spite of the fairly long running time, you never really get a clear idea about what’s exactly going on with Philip Krauss. Indeed, if you would believe this movie, he was pretty much responsible for everything that happened at the Algiers Motel but you never really understand why. Was he just a bigot or was he actually kind of crazy or even some kind of psychopath? Indeed, even though all the other characters were fairly well developed, they were all rather straightforward though and Krauss was, in my opinion, the only real complex character but it seems that the makers didn’t really know what to do with him after all. Anyway, to conclude, even though it didn’t completely convinced me, it was still a strong and powerful drama and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.