Detroit

Name: Detroit
Genre: Drama, History, Thriller, Crime
Released: July 28, 2017
Duration: 143 min
Rating: 77
Cast: Algee Smith, Anthony Mackie, Ben O'Toole, Hannah Murray, Jack Reynor

2017

METASCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 49 Critic Reviews

See All

USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 200 Ratings

See All

6.6

VOTE NOW

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

6.6	Your Score
6.6	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 200 Ratings

Would you like to write a review?

There is a 75 character minimum for reviews. If your review contains spoilers, please check the Spoiler box. Please do not use ALL CAPS. There is no linking or other HTML allowed. Your review may be edited for content. 0/5000

Check box if your review contains spoilers

Play Sound

Please enter your birth date to watch this video:

You are not allowed to view this material at this time.

Detroit

Now Playing: Detroit

Movie Details & Credits

Annapurna Pictures | Release Date: July 28, 2017 | R

Starring: Algee Smith, Anthony Mackie, Ben O'Toole, Hannah Murray, Jack Reynor, Jacob Latimore, Jason Mitchell, John Boyega, Kaitlyn Dever, Will Poulter

Summary: Detroit tells the gripping story of one of the darkest moments during the civil unrest that rocked Detroit in the summer of '67.

Director: Kathryn Bigelow

Genre(s): Drama, History, Thriller, Crime

Rating: R

Runtime: 143 min

See All Details and Credits

Watch Now

Buy on

Stream On

Expand

Metascore

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

Critic Reviews

100

Ann Hornaday

Jul 28, 2017

Detroit is an audacious, nervy work of art, but it also commemorates history, memorializes the dead and invites reflection on the part of the living. In scale, scope and the space it offers for a long-awaited moral reckoning, it’s nothing less than monumental. Read full review

100

Owen Gleiberman

Jul 23, 2017

Bigelow, working from a script by her regular collaborator Mark Boal (it’s their first film since “Zero Dark Thirty”), has created a turbulent, live-wire panorama of race in America that feels like it’s all unfolding in the moment, and that’s its power. We’re not watching tidy, well-meaning lessons — we’re watching people driven, by an impossible situation, to act out who they really are. Read full review

Calvin Wilson

Aug 3, 2017

The film is hard to watch, but its timeliness is impossible to ignore. Still, a case could be made that Bigelow dwells on the violence a bit too obsessively. Read full review

Steve Persall

Aug 3, 2017

We are "there" although Detroit squanders that sensation on revulsion, a gut punch needing to take more shots at our heads. Read full review

Bilge Ebiri

Aug 1, 2017

Bigelow has crafted a portrait of the 1967 Detroit uprising that manages to be both history lesson and incendiary device, even if it sometimes sputters. Read full review

Peter Rainer

Aug 4, 2017

If the film had focused on more than the Algiers Motel incident, if, as it starts out to do, it had attempted to convey a comprehensive and incendiary portrait of a city in crisis, it would have rendered far more justice to those times – and our own. Read full review

Christopher Orr

Jan 9, 2018

What begins as a shocking portrait of police misconduct gradually becomes a test of audience endurance. Read full review

SEE ALL 49 REVIEWS

Write a Review

User Reviews

xepherys

Aug 2, 2017

A very deep and moving film about the Detroit riots. Definitely an eye-opener regarding race relations in the city even to present day, and some background about why many in the city don't trust the police force. Powerful and well worth two and a half hours.

7 of 20 users found this helpful713

dbfx

Jun 25, 2018

What an incredible experience. If you want a moving, extremely re-active and interactive story this is the game for you.

If you love the character interaction parts of games like Mass Effect, you'll love this.

Pushing the boundaries of what a video game is and can be.

0 of 1 users found this helpful01

daviddelnorte23

Jan 19, 2018

Otra de las grandes sorpresas de 2017. Primera película que veo de su directora y me parece fastinante. Salí de la película dando saltos y me apetece ver todo lo que haya hecho esta mujer después de ver esta 'Detroit'. Es genial y completamente mi tipo de cine.

0 of 1 users found this helpful01

Ralfbergs

Jul 7, 2018

Great movie that depicts a real historical event and shows how despicable racism can be. I thought the movie was great and definitely people need to see it to understand how far we have evolved and that we should not reverse it and get back to something like this.

0 of 1 users found this helpful01

Spangle

Aug 5, 2017

As a child, you are told that the police are there to protect you. If ever you should find yourself in a sticky situation, calling the cops is the safest option as there is an obvious line between the good and bad guys. As a white person, this largely stays true. However, this continues toAs a child, you are told that the police are there to protect you. If ever you should find yourself in a sticky situation, calling the cops is the safest option as there is an obvious line between the good and bad guys. As a white person, this largely stays true. However, this continues to be proven incorrect as time goes on. Initially, it was black people crying out for justice in the face of police brutality. Yet, whites turned a blind eye, as their experience told them that only the guilty fear the cops or are arrested. When police brutality began spilling into the public eye and into the suburbs, however, everybody was finally able to get on the same page. Films such as Detroit and the various court cases in which innocent people were heinously gunned down by cops only for the cops to then get off free, further bring the issue to light. While there are good cops and any absolute statement about the police is without merit, there remains one thing that is absolutely certain: the slogan "protect and serve" is accurate insofar as the cops protect and serve themselves and their fellow officers. If a person, no matter innocence, dares to question the cops or is deemed to have interfered with them in some fashion, then they may as well start calling funeral homes because they are not leaving the situation alive. In the fifty years since the Detroit riots, the established fact that the cops are not to be trusted and are the enemy of all unless proven otherwise has gone nowhere. Riots still happen. Innocents are slaughtered by prejudiced and violent psychopaths in cop uniforms. Those cops still get let off free. Helpless and frightened, the victims in this film are just a few of the thousands that cops have lashed out against without provocation, so do not let your skin color provide you with a false sense of protection. When it comes to you or them, cops will opt to "protect and serve" themselves first no matter how innocent you may be. Over the course of two hours, Detroit brilliantly depicts this as black men and white women are violently tortured by white and black cops, while some cops offer a helping hand in the midst of the darkness. It is a surprisingly balanced and reasonable approach to such a hotly contested issue, yet it never shies away from showing the truth in every bloody detail.

Chilling in this display, Detroit often plays out like a horror film. With director Kathryn Bigelow slowly building the tension and setting the scene, it is obvious that emotions are high from the very beginning. Though the riot kicks off after the opening raid on an after hours club, tensions are high even in that scene. Perfectly setting the stage for the rest of the film, Bigelow shows the foundation of the war zone. Neither side trusts each other and both are all too willing to escalate the situation beyond repair. Rapidly unraveling to the boiling point, Bigelow takes the time to establish the riots without unnecessary exposition and then never rushes into getting to the Algiers Motel. While perhaps some of the backstory on the singing group is a bit excessive, the film refuses to skip over details. Every bit is important is establishing the innocence of the men and women in the Algiers, while also showing why the cops would be so hot under the collar and the deaths already caused by the cops. To anybody even casually watching the film, the anger of the men in the Algiers and the tired frustration of the cops can be felt in its entirety. By the time Bigelow finally allows the action to kick off in the home, her slow atmospheric build-up has left the audience falling off of the edge of its seat just waiting to watch the horror that will unfold on this fateful night.

Once the events in the hotel kick in and reach their conclusion, however, the film somehow ramps up the horror even further. If watching black people systematically and remorselessly killed in spite of their innocence was not horrifying enough, Bigelow shows the true horror that unfolds. Not only are they killed, but their murderers can get away with it without or with very little punishment. As a timely social issue film, Detroit not only shows just how little has changed, but brings to light just horrifying the results of the trials are in context. It is not just the potentially justified shooting of an unarmed civilian. It is the intentional shooting of an unarmed civilian with no evidence supporting their assumed guilt. It is murder derived out of a misunderstanding and chaos that has deadly results and no repercussions. It is the kind of horror that is a bit more subtle and less obvious than the bloody psychological and physical torture endured by those in the Algiers, but it is just as horrifying and relies far more on subtle direction from Bigelow to come off properly. The slow unraveling of the case, the ominous appearance of the Attorney (John Krasinski) as he easily gets the men acquitted, and the after effects of it all make it somehow… Expand

3 of 11 users found this helpful38

netflic

Aug 7, 2017

This is the latest movie from Kathryn Bigelow, the director who made "Hurt Locker", one of my most favorite movies.

50 years ago, in 1967 there were infamous riots in Detroit, and this movie is about one of the most tragic episodes of those riots, torture and killing of 3 black people atThis is the latest movie from Kathryn Bigelow, the director who made "Hurt Locker", one of my most favorite movies.

50 years ago, in 1967 there were infamous riots in Detroit, and this movie is about one of the most tragic episodes of those riots, torture and killing of 3 black people at Algiers Motel by Detroit police.

Even though there were several court cases based on investigations of that event, some details are still vague and sketchy. This movie is Bigelov's vision of what happened there in 1967. It is not as much a docu-drama as a dramatization with some fictitious characters.

The movie is hard to watch: it is very intense and brutal. Some even consider it a horror movie. Parts of it truly belong to that category.

I liked the film's cinematography and acting. What I did not like about the movie is that it was too long, almost two and a half hours, and at times it felt dull.

Also, having lived through Los Angeles riots in 1992, I would attest that the movie is somewhat simplistic, uses a brush too wide and avoids important nuances.

Even though in my opinion it is not the best Bigelov's movie, it deserves to be seen and discussed.… Expand

2 of 8 users found this helpful26

Jurepasekure

Aug 3, 2017

This movie is so booooooring with bad acting. Movie is 2 hours and 20 minutes long that s 1 hour and 20 minutes to long it s boring movie i fell into asleep

6 of 34 users found this helpful628

SEE ALL 42 REVIEWS

92	#92 Most Discussed Movie of 2017
68	#68 Most Shared Movie of 2017