‘Detroit’ Opens Friday, Nationwide Aug. 4: Critics' Reviews, Trailers

DETROIT, MI — Director Kathryn Bigelow’s sweeping “Detroit,” which offers a scalding take on the racial and civil unrest that engulfed the Motor City for five days 50 years ago this week, will open in select theaters Friday and nationwide on Aug. 4.

“Detroit” will arrive early in 10 markets, including Detroit, where it will be at the Bel Air Luxury Cinema in Detroit and the Star John R 15 in Madison Heights. Theaters in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Dallas, San Francisco/Oakland, Houston, Atlanta and Baltimore will all get the movie early Buy tickets and search for select theaters here.

The invitation-only world premiere of the movie is Tuesday at the Fox Theatre in Detroit,
where Bigelow and her “Zero Dark Thirty” collaborator, Oscar-winning screenwriter Mark Boal, will appear on the red carpet . Other celebrities expected are John Boyega, Anthony Mackie Algee Smith, Jason Mitchell, Jacob Latimore, Laz Alonso, Ben O’Toole, Will Poulter, Hannah Murray, Kaitlyn Dever, Macom David Kelley, Leon Thomas III, Joseph David Jones, Peyton Alex Smith, Nathan Davis Jr. and Ephraim Sykes.

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Annapurna Pictures, which produced and distributed “Detroit,” is partnering on the premiere and related activities with the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, the Detroit Historical Society and other local groups.

So far, early reviews of the film are 100 percent positive, according to Rotten Tomatoes, a website that tracks critics’ reaction to movies and television programs.

Here are five things reviewers wrote after early screenings of “Detroit”:

“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.” — Owen Gleiberman/Variety

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“Shot mostly in the Boston area rather than in Detroit, where the crew spent about a week, the film certainly succeeds in providing a visceral, you-are-there feeling of being engulfed by these sorrowful events. But its insights never elevate to present a more exalted or acute perspective on what went down 50 summers ago. What we get instead is a ramped up ‘j'accuse’ that will offer forceful connections with present-day incidents for those keen to find them.” — Hollywood Reporter

“ ‘Detroit’ has a vital sense of authenticity, rooted as it is in history, conveyed via Bigelow’s meticulously crafted cinema vérité style that, essentially, thrusts the viewer into the tense events. She is an expert at managing suspense and deftly blending sensitivity with a journalistic sense of details. Her signature filmmaking style — kinetic, visceral and immersive — works brilliantly here. ‘Detroit’ is a work of consummate skill which kicks into high gear when the focus turns from widespread civil unrest to the very specific.” — Claudia Puig/The Wrap

“I left ‘Detroit’ shaken, moved, angry. It’s a striking film, with a significant, wounding impact. But its larger cultural value will have to be assessed by many more people than me. I suspect there will be those who appreciate ‘Detroit’s’ unblinking approach to violence, its frank and unadorned depictions of racism at its most plainly and physically stated. On the other hand, an argument could be made that these scenes of torture are not without a kind of prurience — white filmmakers staging the violation of black bodies as set-piece thriller and then, only later, framing them as political outrage. To me, ‘Detroit’ lies somewhere between those two assessments, in a place lost to soothing answers or sturdy prescriptions. Which is a comfortable enough place for a film to be. Not so much for real people.” — Richard Lawson/Vanity Fair

“I watched ‘Detroit’ with one eye on a movie yet to be made. If anyone is ever to take on a major piece of cinematic historical fiction dealing with Chicago in August 1968, Bigelow’s ‘Detroit’ offers intriguing signposts about what might, and might not, work. A handful of films, from ‘The Battle of Algiers’ to Paul Greengrass' splendid ‘Bloody Sunday,’ have met the challenge of dramatizing civil unrest and law enforcement outrages, memorably. ‘Detroit’ comes close.” — Michael Phillips/Chicago Tribune

Photo via Annapurna Pictures