ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

Female Film Critics 24/375

mark boal

Movie of the Week Reviews 

MOVIE OF THE WEEK August 18-25: DETROIT

Betsy Bozdech 0 Comments , , , , , , , , ,

Intense. Infuriating. Immediate. Kathryn Bigelow’s powerful, often-heartbreaking historical drama Detroit is all of these things and more. Set amid the chaos, violence, and anger of the riots that dominated Motor City during the summer of 1967, the film’s narrative focuses on the police brutality that took place at the Algiers Motel on July 25 and 26 of that year, and the justice system’s subsequent whitewashing of that heinous event. Continue reading…

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Reviews 

DETROIT — Review by Pam Grady

Pam Grady 0 Comments , , , ,

In the summer of 1967, while the West Coast grooved to the Summer of Love, Detroit burned in five days of rioting that pitted the African American community against the arrayed forces of the Detroit police department, Michigan state police, and the National Guard. In her most potent film to date, Kathryn Bigelow reteams with screenwriter Mark Boal to stunningly recreate that time.

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General Archives Reviews Women on Film 

DETROIT — Review by Cynthia Fuchs

Cynthia Fuchs 0 Comments , , ,

This movie’s focus on the 11 hours at the Algiers doesn’t expose racism as deviance as much as it displays its patterns. Like the other two movies in Bigelow and Boal’s war film trilogy, Detroit lurches occasionally, from journalism to sensationalism, from personal experiences to cultural critique. Less invested in any particular character than The Hurt Locker or Zero Dark Thirty, the new film poses a compelling challenge to that framework as a way to interrogate systems. Its focus on racism, the driving force of this war (as it is of most wars) presents it as a pathology and a system, alive in a past that is hardly over.

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