Kathryn Bigelow's film from 2017 attempts to reassemble from testimony and recordings of the people who were actually present at the central shameful events of the 1967 riots in Detroit. Set off by a police raid on a private party held by African -Americans. Their arrest and mistreatment by the police kicked off nights of fire raising, looting and pitch battles.
In the midst of the flair up of rioting, a night of auditions by Motown was taking place. An all male vocal group The Dynamics are waiting to perform. The whole event is pulled just before they are about to go on, because of the worsening situation outside in the streets. The group's attempt to get home safely fails, so they take shelter in The Algiers Hotel. This fateful decision places them in the centre of what turned out to be the most atrocious incident of police racial torture and murderous violence. All of it kicked off by one guy firing a toy gun out of a window.
Bigelow captures all the confusion, panic and torture of that night. With her characteristic flair for hand held camera work, she creates a tense, almost documentary like atmosphere. You feel as though you are right there. The incident in the hotel is the central telling event, which all the surviving people and their families lives were psychologically damaged by. With all its contemporary echoes of George Floyd and numerous other incidents of racially motivaated violence by the police, it is a harrowing watch. Police brutality towards black Americans still to this day largely evades judicial punishment.
CARROT REVIEW - 7/8
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