Movie Review: Detroit

When I first saw trailers for this movie, I thought, maybe. As things go down a troubling road, politically, morally, in this country, it almost seemed like something I needed to do. Sadly, the people who need to see this movie, people who don’t want to see diversity in anything, will not benefit from this movie. It almost reminds me of a scene in American Horror Story where the Kathy Bates character is trapped, forced to watch the entire Roots series. At the end, she still learns nothing. That is basically where we are, as a people. What was most troubling about this movie was that, while it was set in 1967, forty years have passed, and nothing seems to have changed. Cops killing people and getting away with murder is still going on.

The movie is set during the riots of 1967. The city had forced most African Americans into tight living conditions, while the white population moved to the suburbs. The police (much like today), is mostly white. In 1967, civil rights weren’t really a thing. Throughout the movie, I kept asking to my friend, “is that legal?” and she was like, “No, Hina.” The movie follows a couple of storylines: a trio of white cops who shot people in cold blood, an African American security guard working two jobs to get by, a singer and his friend who end up in the wrong place and a variety of other random characters who stroll through, some more bloodied than others.

With respect to the Hina test, hard to give this one a passing grade. There were lots of African American characters, all of them male, pretty much, and two white women who were used as pawns. Not much to appreciate there. I should have a half passing grade. There was some diversity, but it made the diversity a bad thing, to some degree. I’m still conflicted on this point.

This isn’t a movie about feeling better about social unrest. This isn’t a movie with a happy ending. This isn’t a movie that should make you feel like things are changing, things are getting better. It is quite the opposite. People still hate other people for the color of their skin. People still assume things based on the color of someone’s skin. The movie, by itself, was just a movie, but the thoughts and feelings that it should evoke will sit with you. When I got home from the movie, I heard what had happened in Charlottesville, VA and it seemed like nothing had changed, and indeed, some days it feels like nothing has changed at all. As a person of color (I’m Indian), I have a hard time seeing people who are white, who I don’t know, and not being a little nervous, wondering if they hate me as much as other white people hate me, if they plan to kill me.