MOTOR CITY Review

Let me be honest with you about Motor City. It is exactly the kind of film I wanted to love. A dialogue free crime thriller set in 1977 Detroit, all needle drops and muscle cars and Alan Ritchson being enormous in slow motion. On paper this is everything. In practice it is a film that keeps reminding you of better films while failing to become one itself.

The premise is pure pulp. Ritchson plays John Miller, an ex-con with a beautiful girlfriend and a very bad enemy in the form of Ben Foster's drug kingpin Reynolds, a man who looks like he should be selling you a used car and instead turns out to be the most dangerous person in Detroit. Reynolds frames Miller for drug possession, gets him sent back to prison, and reclaims the girlfriend, which is the kind of move that tends to have consequences. None of this is complicated. None of this is meant to be complicated. The problem is that stripping a story down to its bones only works if the bones are interesting, and Motor City keeps mistaking simplicity for depth.

The no dialogue conceit is the film's big swing and it connects just often enough to make you frustrated when it misses. There is a sequence involving "The Chain" by Fleetwood Mac that is genuinely operatic, the kind of needle drop that earns its place in the conversation alongside the greats. And then there are stretches where characters stare at each other through windows while a Bill Withers song explains what is happening and you think, quietly but insistently, I wish someone would just say something.

Shailene Woodley does heroically thankless work as Sophia, a character the film reduces to a prize to be won back rather than a person with an interior life, which is a waste of an actress capable of so much more. Foster is genuinely unsettling in flashes. Ritchson is enormous and sweaty in exactly the proportions the role demands, which is not nothing.

Potsy Ponciroli clearly loves these films. You can feel the love in every frame. But loving something and being able to reimagine it are different skills, and Motor City too often settles for imitation when it should be invention.

A film I wanted to love that I merely liked, sometimes, in moments, between the windows.

🍿 SCORE = 63/100