It’s the night of July 25, 1967 and soul music is drifting out of the Algiers Motel on Woodward Avenue in Detroit, Michigan. “Turn that radio up,” someone says, as a bunch of guys sit around shooting the breeze. An aspiring singer is the subject of some good-natured teasing on account of his fancy new duds. He was supposed to perform earlier that night, but the theater was cleared by the police before he and the band could take to the stage.
The infamous Detroit riots of 1967 were some of the deadliest in American history. They provide the backdrop to director Kathryn Bigelow’s latest but, as we see in the final trailer for “Detroit,” it’s what happened later on that night at the Algiers motel which is the film’s heart and soul. The group of friends become trapped at the center of a maelstrom of police violence, the “truth” about which, it is promised in the trailer, “Detroit” will reveal.
The film hails from Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures. Mark Boal, with whom Bigelow last collaborated on the Jessica Chastain-starrer “Zero Dark Thirty,” penned the script.
“Detroit” stars John Boyega (“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”) and Anthony Mackie. The latter appeared in the “The Hurt Locker,” the film that won Bigelow the Best Director Oscar back in 2010. She’s the only woman to ever win the award.
“Detroit” has a limited theatrical release on July 28 and opens nationwide August 4.
