Detroit (2017)

Whew. This ensemble picture is a powerful, perhaps with artistic license (see below), retelling of the July 1967 Detroit riots and aftermath, but two and a half hours of police brutality is too much. On Sunday afternoon there were probably thirty in our audience, and five people walked out halfway through, when tensions on screen were high. I understood the impulse.

Over 100 cast members are listed on imdb. The main ones are Will Poulter (a 24 year old Brit, he started acting ten years ago in Son of Rambow and was last blogged for The Revenant) as a vicious cop named Krauss, John Boyega (another Brit who came to Americans' attention in Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens and reminded me so much of Denzel Washington, not just his face but also his voice), and Algee Smith (other than one uncredited appearance this is his feature debut) as the sweet-voiced Larry "Cleveland" Reed of the doo-wop group The Dramatics. The other singers in the movie version of The Dramatics are Ephraim Sykes (an Alvin Ailey dancer, he was in the original ensemble of Hamilton on Broadway and starred in Hairspray Live on TV--here's a track of him soloing in Run and Tell That from that production), Leon Thomas III (played Young Simba in The Lion King on Broadway in 2003 and in August Rush (2007) he played a young street musician--I remember that performance and was happy to find this clip of him singing Father's Song. Since August Rush I've been trying to prove or disprove that Thomas III is descended from the mid-century throat-singer Leon Thomas who sang The Creator Has a Master Plan), and Joseph David-Jones (new to me, he's been in 11 episodes of Nashville). Maybe after the movie has been out for a while, clips will be available with just the music for those who eschew violence. More on the music in a moment.

Some other cast members familiar to me are Jason Mitchell (last in Keanu) as the fool in the do-rag; Jack Reynor (an Irishman, he was the big brother in Sing Street) as Demens, Krauss's stupid partner; and Kaitlyn Dever (also British! She was in Laggies). Everyone in the cast plays an American, by the way. Getting special mention in the credits are Anthony Mackie as a veteran and John Krasinski as a lawyer in the aftermath (last blogged for Black or White and Born in China, respectively) and they both appear late in the movie.

Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal were most recently in these pages for Zero Dark Thirty after winning Oscars for The Hurt Locker--the first woman to win one for directing--both, like Detroit, action movies based on real events.

This article in Slate, an interview with an author familiar with the riots, goes into some of the artistic license. The historical prologue, with paintings from Jacob Lawrence's Great Migration series (click on the panels on the right to enlarge), is beautiful, but Jack noted that too few other cities are mentioned for their inner-city riots in the late 1960s.

James Newton Howard is the credited composer, and here is one of his tracks. You can find others from the movie by looking for videos with similar pictures. This list of songs (clips with the black buttons, full songs with the red), however, will take you back to the great music of the day, both real and recreated. Not on that list is the movie Dramatics' If You Haven't Got Love. And it's fun to hear Smith singing Grow with the real Larry Reed or the original Dramatics.

The end of the movie tells us where are they now or what happened to them. The five who walked out  can help explain the 78% from audiences (84 from critics) on Rotten Tomatoes.

Those prone to Motion Picture Motion Sickness should be wary of this jumpy un-steadi-cam extravaganza. I'm adding it my MPMS list, which concludes alphabetically with Zero Dark Thirty.