Detroit (15)

Kathryn Bigelow

Logan Lucky (12A)

Steven Soderbergh

KATHRYN Bigelow makes films drawn from the open wounds of the news pages. After the American occupation of Iraq (The Hurt Locker) and the War on Terror (Zero Dark Thirty), she now recalls a notorious event from American history that, despite taking place 50 years ago, could not be more relevant or raw.

Detroit recreates the civil unrest in the Midwestern city in 1967, and in particular the tragic events at the Algiers Motel, where three unarmed African American men were shot dead by police. In doing so, it draws unavoidable parallels with numerous police shootings of black men in the US in recent years, not to mention the white supremacist hatred that is currently ripping America apart.

True to their customary approach, Bigelow and regular writer Mark Boal put their audience inside the horror of the event. Detroit is no easy ride. It’s painfully intense, frightening, horrifying and deeply saddening.

An animated prologue sets the scene historically, laying out the discrimination and inequality leading to the deep-rooted frustration of urban African Americans in the 1960s; then Bigelow combines archive footage and new, verité-style camerawork for a short, sharp recreation of the Detroit rebellion, as a raid on an African American after-hours bar leads to anger on the streets, then violent rioting that embroils the city for days. The National Guard is called in and a curfew imposed, as Detroit starts to resemble a war zone.

And then the story zooms into the Algiers. During the curfew, a group of black men are having a party in an annexe of the motel, when one jokingly (and stupidly) fires a toy pistol out of the window. Within seconds a hail of real bullets is fired into the building, and police and soldiers descend upon them.

Unfortunately these include three racist and highly dangerous local cops, led by the monstrous Krauss (a fictionalised character, reflecting the behaviour of those implicated and chillingly played by Will Poulter). He lines the occupants of the annexe against a wall, including two young white women – equally despised because they have befriended blacks – and embarks on the “death game” in order to get them to reveal the supposed sniper.

Amongst those persecuted are R&B singer Larry Reed (Algie Smith) and his friend, who entered the motel, ironically, to escape the violence on the streets. Onlookers include Melvin Dismukes (Star Wars’ John Boyega), a black private security guard, who enters the hotel hoping to defuse the situation but finds himself powerless and deeply compromised by what follows.

Few can create tension as well as Bigelow. As the police officers beat and terrorise their helpless victims, this is as agonising to watch as any war or horror film. It’s not just the violence that is so disturbing, but the hate that fuels it.

But there are problems. The legal aftermath is not presented with nearly as much detail or clarity as the violence; if the confusion is intended as another dig at the system, it needs to be better presented. And the experience raises the hoary question of just how much audience agony is necessary to make a point.

IF nerve-shredding, heart-breaking real life isn’t to your liking this week, then look no further than Steven Soderbergh’s hugely good-natured heist comedy, Logan Lucky.

Soderbergh returns to the territory of his Oceans 11 and its sequels – a cunningly executed, violence-free heist conducted by a gang of likeable rogues. As it follows the perennially unlucky Logans and their Southern blue-collar cohorts, this outing has fewer tent-pole stars and less glamour than the Oceans, but more off-the-wall character detail, warmth and wit.

Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum) is a former school football star with a limp, his brother Clyde (Adam Driver) an Iraq War veteran with a prosthetic arm. When Jimmy unfairly loses his construction job at a speedway stadium, he persuades Clyde to join him in payback. Their unlikely gang includes their hairdresser sister Mellie (Riley Keough) and the aptly named safebreaker Joe Bang (Daniel Craig).

There is a small problem with Bang, who is residing in the penitentiary; but the resourceful Jimmy has an idea about that. One of the recurring themes of the film is that the slow-talking, unassuming brothers are nowhere near as stupid as they seem; another, unavoidable positive is that they don’t conform to the usual redneck stereotype – though the setting is not far from Charlottesville, this is a reminder that not everyone in Trump territory is a bigot.

Soderbergh’s direction is extremely laid-back, disarmingly so when it comes to the heist. He leaves center state to newcomer Rebecca Blunt’s rum script, and the actors. Tatum and Driver are excellent, but with his bleached buzz cut, penchant for gummy bears and mid-heist science lecture, Craig steals the show.