“I assume this is about what went on at the motel?” John Boyega’s character, Dismukes, asks during an interrogation in the new spot for “Detroit.” It’s obvious he wants to cooperate with the cops and be as helpful as possible. Playing dumb, one half of the good cop/bad cop team shoots back, “What happened at the motel?” But the police officers already have a theory — one that could put Dismukes behind bars. They are looking for a scapegoat, and the perfect person to blame for anything in Detroit during the summer of 1967 is a young black man.
Directed by Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow and written by her “Hurt Locker” and “Zero Dark Thirty” collaborator Mark Boal, “Detroit” is the story of what went down at the Algiers Motel on a particular night of the Detroit Riots. A group of black men originally go there to peacefully wait out the conflict. But that plan goes awry when a few cops — scared of the violence and resentful that their city is now a “war zone” — descend on the Algiers. Dismukes, a National Guardsman, tries to de-escalate the tension. But it looks like his good deed won’t go unpunished; if the powers that be get their way, Dismukes will be solely blamed for whatever happened at the motel.
Alongside Boyega (“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”), “Detroit” features an ensemble cast including Anthony Mackie (“The Hurt Locker”) and John Krasinski (“The Office”). The film opens nationwide August 4, 2017.
