Detroit

This is a film that tests your patience, then rewards it. It's hard to know where it's going at first; the mixture of documentary style presentation along with dramatic scenes of the 1967 Detroit riots makes the direction of the work seem general and unfocused. Early sequences are more of a pastiche of scenes rather than a cohesive narrative--and yours truly has never been a fan of the pastiche approach. But stay with it: the very disparate threads eventually come together into a long examination of the events at the Algiers Motel, and that's where the unfocused film turns riveting. (Bigelow's strength as a director seems to be in presenting intense interactions.) Once the movie gets rolling there, it's an absorbing story all the way to the end. Definitely worth a look, and worth thinking about after the credits roll.