Detroit

Detroit(2017) - Kathryn Bigelow

I know that complaining about the Academy Awards is like complaining about the rain, but the fact that this film wasn’t even NOMINATED for editing is totally insane to me. This movie is intense and endlessly fascinating. Every moment felt not just necessary to the story, but totally engrossing. This is a film about interactions and character dynamics, with subtext playing out in every moment. The movie begins as a sprawling document of the Detroit riots before zeroing in on a specific conflict at the Algiers motel which serves as a microcosm of racial injustice. Spending over an hour trapped in a motel with a racist maniac cop isn’t just an effective tool to create tension, it reinforces the idea that racial injustice isn’t some vague political issue, it’s played out in how we interact with each other every day. Detroit is a movie about the Detroit riots, but even more than that it’s a movie about the here and now, the dynamics between police and minorities that are found as easily today as they were in 1967.