DETROIT (US - 2017) Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Written by Mark Boal. Cast: John Boyega, Will Poulter, Anthony Mackie, John Krasinski, Algee Smith, Jacob Latimore, Jason Mitchell, Hannah Murray, Kaitlyn Dever, Jack Reynor, Ben O'Toole, Nathan Davis Jr, Peyton Alex Smith, Malcolm David Kelley, Joseph David-Jones, Laz Alonso, Austin Hebert, Jennifer Ehle, Chris Coy, Miguel Pimentel, Chris Chalk, Glenn Fitzgerald, Dennis Staroselsky, Darren Goldstein, Jeremy Strong, Gbenga Akkinagbe. (R, 143 mins) A harrowing chronicle of the 12th Street Riots in Detroit in late July 1967, with a focus on the infamous "Algiers Motel Incident," DETROIT is the latest from the HURT LOCKER and ZERO DARK THIRTY team of director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal. It's pretty powerful--unflinching and disturbing, and difficult to watch at times. As a dramatization, it takes some liberties, changes a few names, and condenses some incidents for time and storytelling purposes, but according to those who were there who were either interviewed by Bigelow and Boal or, in the case of Juli Hysell, who was 18 years old at the time (played in the film by Hannah Murray), on the set as a consultant, it largely sticks with the events of the night, if not the aftermath. DETROIT's themes and imagery resonate today with seemingly endless police shootings of frequently unarmed suspects by inevitably acquitted cops and the resulting protests by groups like Black Lives Matter. Things haven't changed over 50 years, and while the more "woke" film cognoscenti argue, in their increasingly ludicrous pursuit of things to find offensive, that it's a film that shouldn't have been directed by a 65-year-old white woman, Academy Award-winner Bigelow again demonstrates that that she's one of the top American filmmakers going, something anyone in the know figured out back in 1987 with NEAR DARK, and one that you wish would work more frequently.
In an unusual prologue conveyed by a series of Jacob Lawrence paintings, white flight to the suburbs begins to take hold in post-WWII, leaving much of the Detroit area as segregated black neighborhoods left to decline, with increased police presence slowly ratcheting up the racial tension. That tension explodes on July 23, 1967 with a raid on a private club, without a liquor license, hosting a party for returning black Vietnam vets. The cops herd them out of the building like cattle, prodding them into paddy wagons as bystanders demand to know "What did they do?" Before long, bottles are thrown, windows are smashed, stores are looted, and a Molotov cocktail sets a gas station ablaze. Despite pleas from congressman John Conyers (Laz Alonso), his constituents continue destroying their neighborhood out of a sense of frustration that's only growing. Gov. George Romney (seen in archival news footage, used frequently throughout) deploys the National Guard, the US Army, and the state police to maintain a presence in the area in a virtual martial law-like state. The riots force aspiring R&B group The Dramatics, led by frontman Larry "Cleveland" Reed (Algee Smith), to leave a gig at the Fox Theater in downtown Detroit, but they're separated after a bus is hit by bottles, with Larry and his buddy Fred Temple (Jacob Latimore) venturing off on their own and ultimately checking into the nearby Algiers Motel to lay low for the night.
Larry and Fred end up partying with some people in a house on the Algiers property known as "the annex," where rooms are also rented. These people include hot-tempered Carl (Jason Mitchell, best known as Eazy-E in STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON), his friend Aubrey (Nathan Davis Jr), and Vietnam vet Greene (Anthony Mackie), among others, plus 18-year-old Hysell and her friend Karen (Kaitlyn Dever), two white girls from Ohio. Demonstrating what black men go through with cops on a daily basis, Carl shoots Aubrey with a blank from a tiny starter pistol, which provides a laugh for everyone. Emboldened, Carl fires more blanks out of a window in the direction of some National Guardsmen on patrol. This sends the Guard, some Army officers, and some local cops on the scene to raid the Algiers. Three Detroit P.D. patrolmen arrive and, under the leadership of bullying, racist Krauss (Will Poulter of THE REVENANT), the situation escalates into a grueling night of intimidation and torture as Krauss (who's already killed Carl and planted a knife on him to claim it was justified), Demens (Jack Reynor), and Flynn (Ben O'Toole) are set off by the sight of two white girls hanging out in a motel filled with black men and begin terrorizing everyone in search of the gun and the shooter.They play a "death game," a psychological tactic of taking someone into another room and firing a gun, tricking the others into talking, lest they be shot as well. Things get even worse from there, as Melvin Dismukes (John Boyega), a security guard working at a market across the street from the Algiers, tries to maintain some semblance of order by going along to get along, respecting the cops and deferring to Krauss with the best intentions for everyone's safety even though he's horrified by what he sees and feels too outnumbered to stop it.
DETROIT's midsection is bookended by a clunky beginning and a protracted finale that turns into a standard courtroom drama not helped by the distracting late-film appearance of John Krasinski, who's still too recognizably John Krasinski to play an asshole defense attorney more concerned with putting the victims on trial (Dismukes is also charged, along with the three cops, when the story breaks and ultimately three dead bodies and several seriously injured motel residents need to be explained). But the long, agonizing Algiers sequence that makes up the biggest chunk of the film is a masterpiece of sustained, visceral tension. You'll actually feel your heart racing and your stomach knotting as things quickly spiral out of control, with Bigelow and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd (THE HURT LOCKER, CAPTAIN PHILLIPS) creating an unbearably claustrophobic atmosphere with a lot of close-ups and a refusal to shy away from the brutality exhibited by the cops, whose power trip is abetted by the military and the state police looking the other way and leaving when they see Krauss' unhinged handling of the situation. Poulter is a big reason the Algiers section works as well as it does. Not a classically attractive leading man, the British Poulter scowls and smirks so much that he looks like an inbred Dylan Baker much of the time, vividly portraying what will probably go down as the most repugnant movie villain of 2017, and doing it so convincingly that it may actually do him more harm than good. Krauss is the kind of loathsome character that can be a typecasting career-killer for the actor who brings him to life, and Poulter (who never overdoes it, which makes it even more terrifying) is so good here that you may end up instantly despising him every time you see him in the future.
Top-billed Boyega is ostensibly the star as Dismukes, but his character arc seems like some scenes are missing, at least when it comes to the extent of his culpability in what happened. It's not really clear why he was put on trial or why Juli picks him out of a police lineup and gets him charged with the cops, beyond a knee-jerk need to pin it all on a black guy, which homicide detectives seem eager to do until too many people start telling the same story of three out-of-control cops. As presented here, Dismukes went along to get along. He was a passive observer who didn't take part in any of the violence or mayhem but felt powerless to stand up to Krauss, and may have been deemed guilty by association simply because of his security guard uniform. By the end, the emotional core of the film is Larry "Cleveland" Reed," a man with an incredible singing voice who was so traumatized by his night at the Algiers that it altered the course of his life. He walked away from a lucrative career with The Dramatics to live a quiet life in Detroit, where he leads a church choir to this day. Smith's performance is every bit as powerful as Poulter's in different ways, but despite a middle that's as brilliantly-handled as anything you'll see in a movie this year, along with convincing period detail that's right up there with ZODIAC, DETROIT falls short of greatness due to a cumbersome and unfocused start and finish that's kind of all over the place. Still a terrific film that needs to be seen, though one really must question the logic of releasing this in the summer.
THE CIRCLE (France/UAE/US - 2017) Directed by James Ponsoldt. Written by James Ponsoldt and Dave Eggers. Cast: Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, John Boyega, Karen Gillan, Bill Paxton, Ellar Coltrane, Patton Oswalt, Glenne Headly, Nate Corddry, Judy Reyes, Mamoudou Athie, Smith Cho, Amir Talai, Poorna Jagannathan, Eve Gordon. (PG-13, 110 mins) Based on the 2013 novel by Dave Eggers, who shares screenplay credit with director James Ponsoldt (THE SPECTACULAR NOW), THE CIRCLE has a premise with such a short window of topicality that the movie adaptation feels dated just four years later. It doesn't help that TV shows like MR. ROBOT and BLACK MIRROR have already explored similar themes much more effectively, but THE CIRCLE loses the satirical elements of Eggers' novel and opts for a much more heavy-handed approach. What might've worked on the page doesn't work always work on the screen, as characters here don't have conversations as much as they drop exposition and make important speeches. Everything has to be simplified so the audience can stay caught up, then it starts glossing over things so much that the entire second half of the film is a complete mess. A lot of this was likely due to negative test screenings leading to extensive reshoots being done in January 2017, just three months before the film's release and long after filming wrapped in late 2015. The film goes in a completely different direction than the book, so much so that it's a safe assumption that the finished film isn't exactly a collaborative effort between Eggers and Ponsoldt.
Mae Holland (Emma Watson) is temping in customer service at the local water department when her Scottish college friend Annie (Karen Gillan) lands her an interview with her employer, The Circle. A Google-like tech empire in Silicon Valley, The Circle is always pioneering advances in social media and software dedicated to making people "connected." Their latest product launch involves "SeeChange," a tiny, round camera that can be placed anywhere and go unnoticed, utilizing GPS and facial recognition software and generating much in the way of moral and ethical dilemmas over privacy and surveillance. Circle founder and CEO Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks) claims that such advances are for the greater good of humanity, but loner Mae's gut reaction is one of apprehension. The mostly millennial employees base their lives around The Circle, living in dorm-like apartments "on campus," and participating in "suggested" activities on their off time with a fervent and almost cult-like devotion to their employer. Mae is passive-aggressively reprimanded by a Circle social media adviser for not taking part in the events and for going home to visit her parents--mom Bonnie (Glenne Headly) and dad Vinnie (the late Bill Paxton in his last film)--and she's somewhat alarmed that The Circle already knows her father is suffering from multiple sclerosis. Mae is chastised for taking a job with The Circle by her childhood friend Mercer (Ellar Coltrane of BOYHOOD), who hates texting and the internet and has no doubt condescendingly uttered, at least once in his life, "I don't even own a TV." Her friendship with Mercer falls apart after she shares a pic of his custom-made antler chandeliers and outraged millennials start following him around to harass him get in his face, and shout "deer killer!" After an incident involving her trespassing to go kayaking ends with her being rescued after being seen on a SeeChange camera aimed at the bay, Mae makes the ultimate commitment to The Circle: she goes "transparent," wearing a small camera 24/7 to document every moment of her life for Circle's 240 million members. This plot turn could've been a great BLACK MIRROR episode in the hands of Charlie Brooker, and it also recalls both Bertrand Tavernier's remarkably ahead-of-its-time cult film DEATH WATCH (1980) as well as Peter Weir's THE TRUMAN SHOW (1998), but once Circler comments turn up on the screen for most of the remainder of the film, it more or less starts to look like INSTAGRAM: THE MOVIE.
Mae's advance up the ladder at The Circle puts a strain on her friendship with Annie as well as her relationship with her parents, who are also required to install cameras at their house. Those cameras are taken offline when Mae's followers, seeing what Mae sees, accidentally catch a glimpse of her parents having sex with the aid of a penis pump for her disabled father, humiliating both of them. Mae also forms a muddled alliance with Ty Lavitte (John Boyega of STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS), a legendary hacker who works for The Circle, designing a program that's been hijacked by Bailey and his business partner Tom Stenton (Patton Oswalt) to spy on every Circle user and store all of their personal information, phone calls, e-mails, texts, etc. Much to Lavitte's disgust, Bailey and Stenton use this information to blackmail a senator (Eve Gordon) who's been publicly critical of The Circle, and with Mae's help, they even concoct a plan to tie The Circle into voter registration records and not only allow users to vote through their Circle account, but require them to be Circle users in order to vote ("The US government needs us more than we need them," Stenton says). There's some heady implications in a lot of what goes on in THE CIRCLE, especially the ultimate fate of Mercer as a scathing critique of social media hysteria, but Ponsoldt bungles it at every turn. THE CIRCLE is content to lecture the audience and too often comes off like it's taking an approach to technology that's equal parts Stubborn Luddite and Scared Old Man. What could've been a smart, topical critique of our reliance on technology and our willingness to sacrifice privacy and human interaction for convenience and a feeling of connection with the rest of the world comes off as smug and sanctimonious, complete with a laughably simplistic non-ending that has Mae staging a revolt against Bailey and Stenton and literally Pied Pipering her newly-woke colleagues out of a darkened, pitch black auditorium through an exit door, outside into the light. Watson is a capable actress but she's strangely one-note here. Boyega seems to have been affected most by the reshoots, looking like he spent his entire time on the set unsuccessfully trying to locate Ponsoldt, while Paxton musters what trace amounts of dignity he can with a penis pump and in another scene that requires him to piss himself. What little novelty this misfire offers comes from seeing Hanks and Oswalt atypically cast as quietly sinister villains, but neither seems to have spent more than a few days working on this, enough for one to surmise that when Bailey turns to Stenton at the end and says "We are so fucked," it's very possible that it was just Hanks talking to Oswalt without knowing the cameras were rolling. Altered extensively from Eggers' novel, THE CIRCLE is disjointed, already past its sell-by date, and completely unsure of what point its even trying to make.
