Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal have teamed up twice before, on The Hurt Locker<\/em> (2008) and Zero Dark Thirty<\/em> (2012). It is tempting, then, to see Detroit<\/em> as the climax of this team\u2019s war trilogy, where the war\u00a0comes home.<\/p>\n The film brings us to the city in the summer of 1967. It is set off with a series of images drawn from Jacob Lawrence paintings showing the rising racial segregation of the city, the promise and failure of industrialization for the people there, and the ensuing division and desperation permeating the atmosphere.<\/p>\n Like Bigelow and Boal\u2019s previous films, the movie itself isn\u2019t about the broader issues playing out. Instead, it is a cinematic attempt to bring the viewer into the heads of a select few characters caught up in those issues. In this regard, the film is excellent. We are brought face-to-face with the white racist cop (Officer Krauss, played by Will Poulter) again and again.\u00a0We see his initial musings about what\u2019s wrong with \u201cthem\u201d (African Americans) which today would be defended by the Alt-right and its neo-nazi allies as mere free speech. Then his shooting of an unarmed black man in the back. Then his denial-and-then-defense of said shooting before his fed up boss. And finally in the long sequence of events unfolding at The Algiers, a motel just beyond the borders of the unrest unfolding in the city.<\/p>\n We are brought face-to-face with Melvin Dismukes (John Boyega), a black security guard at a grocery store, working two jobs. Dismukes\u00a0goes to The Algiers as an impossible hero: a black man in a uniform that buys him just enough trust from the white cops and national guard troops to move freely, but not enough to have actual power over the situation as it spirals on. And we are brought face-to-face with Larry Reed (Algee Smith) a singer in an up-and-coming soul group called The Dramatics whose shot at fame is dashed by unrest erupting just before he and his group were set to perform at the Fox Theater. Reed and his friend, the band manager, wind up on the streets struggling to get home, or at least to safety, caught between rocks thrown at their bus and rows of white cops yelling menacingly at them to go home. A number of other characters are introduced, and developed just enough to allow for a connection, if only fleeting.<\/p>\n But the film, like the two before it, is driven far more by the intense situation that the characters are thrown into: in this case what feels like two solid hours in an annex of The Algiers motel.<\/p>\n(spoilers ahead)<\/h3>\n