Detroit

There's a strong centre to this film, about the incidents that happened in "Detroit" in the Hotel Algiers in 1967 while a race riot burned outside. A tense standoff between the (largely black) residents and the (largely white) police, national guard and security guards sees terrible abuses of power as the investigators go beyond all measure of reason.

Unfortunately, the further the action gets away from the Hotel Algiers (at the beginning and end of the film) the weaker it gets. Kathryn Bigelow's film flounders badly when the characters aren't contained, whether it be in the lead-up getting people to the Hotel (which is a bit too lacksidaisical in the setup - there isn't a great deal of urgency or sense of why this matters) or in the aftereffects as justice fails to be achieved (which takes a substantial time on what's really a detour to tell material that could really have been established with a couple of epilogue title cards- as it is, the film wraps up with title cards anyway). It's a pity that there's a strong film hiding in the middle of this that gets muddled by trying-and-failing to cover too much material, rather than just illuminating the central incident and leaving it at that.