Director Kathryn Bigelow’s been AWOL since her 2012 military thriller “Zero Dark Thirty,” but she’s come roaring back with another searing dramatization. This time, it’s of a single horrifying incident during Detroit’s 1967 unrest, also known as the 12th Street Riot. “Detroit” may be tricked out with the Motown and miniskirts of the era, but its police-brutality narrative, assembled with firsthand accounts of that day, has chilling parallels with the here and now. It is not an easy watch, and it is an essential one.
Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal open with a broad look at the historical underpinnings of Detroit’s racial unrest and the event that tipped off the riot, a police raid on an African-American speakeasy hosting a party for Vietnam veterans. A bottle is thrown, then a Molotov cocktail, and soon furious crowds are massing in the street, facing off against sweaty and panicky cops.
One is Officer Krauss (Will Poulter, who has accurately described himself as having “the eyebrows of Satan”); he doesn’t think twice about firing his gun at a fleeing looter holding two bags of groceries, despite his department’s mandate not to.
Gradually, Bigelow introduces the rest of the characters who’ll cross paths at the Algiers Motel, a roadside joint where music and laughter continue on despite the chaos outside.
Melvin (John Boyega) is a private security guard working nearby, trying to keep the peace where he can. Larry (Algee Smith) is the lead singer of an up-and-coming band called the Dramatics, who grabs a room at the motel with his manager, Fred (Jacob Latimore), after their concert is canceled due to rioting.
Julie (Hannah Murray) and Karen (Kaitlyn Dever) are young women partying at the motel with a group including Carl (Jason Mitchell), who’s clowning around, brandishing a starter pistol.
That pistol, which shoots blanks, tips off a showdown with the police, who storm the Algiers complex and essentially take the guests hostage, insisting someone must know where the sniper is.
As she did in her previous two films (“Zero” and “The Hurt Locker”), Bigelow has an unparalleled capacity for depicting the way fear and anger and confusion distill into terrible, violent decisions. A war vet (Anthony Mackie), who’s already endured being arrested at the speakeasy, is singled out and beaten.
The white women are abused by the cops for being in a motel with black men. National Guard soldiers, standing outside, shake their heads at what’s going on and then leave: “I don’t want to get involved in any civil-rights mix-up,” says one. Bigelow makes it impossible for the viewer to make the same choice.What astounds is how easily the story could be lifted out of its time period and into ours.
The police, convinced they’re the ones under siege, threaten, brutalize and ultimately murder. What happens in the aftermath of that night is no less disturbing for being predictable.
Bigelow, being who she is, has recognizable faces turn up for the smallest of roles in this ensemble horror-drama: Samira Wiley (“The Handmaid’s Tale”) is a clerk at the Algiers; John Krasinski plays the lawyer representing the cops. Historical touches are deft: Here’s the young Congressman John Conyers (Laz Alonso) giving a speech via megaphone to calm an angry mob; there’s Martha and the Vandellas, on the same bill as the Dramatics.
Mostly, though, what astounds is how easily the story could be lifted out of its time period and into ours. As she did with events in Iraq and Pakistan, Bigelow looks likely to make sure people don’t forget the Algiers incident, or its chilling legacy.